Chain-Based Industrial Governance and Breakthrough Innovation in Core Technologies: The Roles of Collaborative Innovation and Chain-Leader Dominance

Based on the availability of public data, 2023 is set as the most recent year of observation. Considering that the Chain Leader Policy was first introduced in 2017, six years of data prior to the policy implementation are included to ensure a symmetric pre- and post-treatment window. Accordingly, the study period spans from 2011 to 2023. The research sample covers all A-share listed firms in China during this period, subject to the following screening criteria: firms in the financial sector are excluded; firms designated as ST or *ST are removed; and all continuous variables are winsorized at the 1st and 99th percentiles. After applying these criteria, the final dataset comprises an unbalanced panel of 15,117 firm-year observations across 3,721 unique firms.Patent data were obtained from the China National Intellectual Property Administration and the China Research Data Services Platform (CNRDS). Information on the implementation of the Chain Leader Policy was manually collected from official documents released by local governments, economic and technological development zones, and other relevant public sources. Firm-level control variables were mainly sourced from the CSMAR and Wind databases, while city-level data were drawn from the corresponding years of the China City Statistical Yearbook. This comprehensive data structure enables a robust identification of the policy’s causal effects.