AbstractThe important task of China's economic development at this stage is the transformation of the development model, that is, the gradual transition from a factor-driven to an innovation-driven economic development model to achieve high-quality economic development. In view of the fact that the number of patents can not explain the high-quality development of China's economy, starting from the differences between technologies, this paper estimates the regional technological complexity, which represents the regional innovation capability. Based on the data of China's invention patent applications from 1985 to 2015, the study finds that: the improvement of the number of patents has no significant impact on the high-quality development of regional economy, while the innovation ability characterized by technical complexity can significantly promote the high-quality development of regional economy; the promotion effect of innovation ability on the high-quality development of regional economy has a economic cycle effect, taking the 2008 global economic crisis as the time section At the same time, the main influencing factors of high-quality development of regional economy change from capital investment to innovation ability. Furthermore, based on the city scale effect, it is found that there is a significant single-threshold effect between innovation capability and high-quality economic development. Only in cities with a permanent population of more than 500,000 can the improvement of innovation capability promote high-quality regional economic development. Therefore, in order to accelerate the process of high-quality economic development, regions should pay attention to the adjustment of technological structure and carry out innovative activities in accordance with local conditions.
