The Measurement of Innovation Efficiency of Chinese High-tech Industry Using Data Envelopment Analysis

Abstract

In the era of knowledge economy, a country’s economic competitiveness depends largely on the development level of high-tech industry. This paper evaluates the efficiency of China’s high-tech industry in 31 provinces in 2012 with data envelopment analysis. The empirical results are summarized as following. Firstly, when the effects of exogenous environmental variables are not controlled, the comprehensive technical efficiency of 31 provinces will be overestimated, the pure technical efficiency will be underestimated, and the scale efficiency value will be overestimated. Secondly, after eliminating the environmental impact, the comprehensive technical efficiency of 31 provinces with the average of 0.395 is rather low, due to the low scale efficiency.