ABSTRACT
Government innovativeness is an organisational-level attribute rather than an innovation-level attribute. Extant literature on government innovativeness has provided two main approaches to operationalise this concept. The first potential measurement is public managers’ perceived organisational innovativeness. The second potential measurement is a count of government innovations recognised by influential academic institutions. This book uses the number of IECLG winners and finalists to measure the innovativeness of local governments in China. In Chapter 5, I first discuss the empirical measurement of local government innovativeness in China. I then provide descriptive evidence to show how administrative hierarch shapes local government innovativeness in China. Finally, I conduct a series of provincial- and city-level statistical analyses based on two original panel datasets, covering 31 provinces from 2001 to 2015 and 270 cities from 2005 to 2015, to show how the span of control affects local government innovativeness in China.
