Abstract Using provincial data of China during the period of 1990—2013,this paper measures the extent of innovation agglomeration and knowledge spillovers in 30 provinces and cities, and empirically analyzes the combined influence those two factors have on regional income gap. The results show that: (1)Innovation agglomeration and knowledge spillovers play significant roles in promoting industrial agglomeration and the regional economic growth. (2) The huge difference in the degree of innovation agglomeration among regions and space limitations of knowledge spillovers lead to the widening of the regional income gap. (3)The distance to the nearest regional innovation center city determines economic status in which regions closer to the innovation centers enjoy higher economic growth rate. To narrow the regional gap while sustaining a long-term economic growth, it is a must to optimize the density and distribution of innovation centers through urbanization, to strengthen the sharing of innovation resources among regions and to promote regional collaborative innovation, which will eventually lead to the realization of coordinated regional development.
2018, Vol. 35 
