Innovation and Firm Co-ownership Network in China’s Electric Vehicle Industry

Firms are embedded in complex networks,where diverse ideas combine and generate new ideas.Shareholders of firms are of-ten seen as critical external resources that have significant influence on firm innovation.The current literature tends to focus on the rela-tionship between firms and their shareholders,while paying less attention to the connections between firms with the same shareholders.This article identifies two types of network spillover effects,intra-city network effect and inter-city network effect,by visualizing the co-ownership networks in China’s electric vehicle(EV)industry.We find that firms with the same shareholders,which are defined as co-owned EV firms,are more innovative than non-co-owned ones.Furthermore,there are two dominant types of firm co-ownership ties formed by corporate and financial institution shareholders.While corporate shareholders help exploiting local tacit knowledge,financial institutions are more active in bridging inter-city connections.The conclusion is confirmed at both firm and city levels.This paper theor-izes the firm co-ownership network as a new form of institutional proximity and tested the result empirically.For policy consideration,we have emphasized the importance of building formal or informal inter-firm network,and the government should further enhance the knowledge flow channel by institutional construction.