Protection of Intellectual Property Rights and Industrial Agglomeration: Evidence From the Creative Industries in China

Recently, creative industries have clustered in medium and large cities. Based on data from the provincial economic census, this article applies the method of exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) to investigate the spatial correlation of the creative economy in China, thereby, shedding light on spatial dependence patterns and spatial interactions. The empirical result shows that there is a spatial correlation and an obvious agglomeration effect. The protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) has a positive effect on the agglomeration of creative industries. This result is robust against various estimation methods. Besides the protection of IPRs, many other elements influence the agglomeration of creative industries. We find that the real wage, which has been considered the most important determinant for industry agglomeration in the classical literature, has a positive but insignificant effect on the agglomeration of creative industries. The estimated coefficients for the level of marketization and cultural endowment are significant and positive.