Although infrastructure and innovation play important roles in fostering a country's economic growth, discussion in the literature about how the two are connected is limited. This paper examines the impact of road density on firm innovation in the People's Republic of China. The analysis uses a matched patent database at the firm level and road information at the city level. Regional variation in the difficulty of constructing roads is used as an instrumental variable to address the potential endogeneity problem of the road variable. The empirical results show that a 10% improvement in road density increases the average number of approved patents per firm by 0.71%. Road development spurs innovation by enlarging market size and facilitating knowledge spillover.

中文翻译：

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创新之路：来自中华人民共和国（PRC）的企业级证据

尽管基础设施和创新在促进一个国家的经济增长中发挥着重要作用，但文献中关于两者之间如何联系的讨论仍然有限。本文研究了道路密度对中华人民共和国企业创新的影响。分析使用公司级别的匹配专利数据库和城市级别的道路信息。道路施工难度的区域差异被用作工具变量，以解决道路变量的潜在内生性问题。实证结果表明，道路密度提高10％可使每家公司的平均批准专利数增加0.71％。道路发展通过扩大市场规模和促进知识溢出来刺激创新。