LAUSR

Abstract This study firstly adopts Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) window analysis with an ideal window width to dynamically investigate the technological innovation efficiency of China's high-tech industry during 2009–2016, simultaneously from provincial, regional and industrial perspective. The ideal window widths in the high-tech industry and its five sub-industries are all 4. The findings indicate that the efficiency of high-tech industry is low and presents a wave-shaped trend, as well as presents large inter-provincial and inter-regional differences. The efficiency in eastern region is always the highest, while the efficiency in northeastern region is the lowest. Moreover, the efficiencies in eastern region and western region both presented wave-shaped decrease trends, while the efficiencies in central region and northeastern region both presented wave-shaped increase trends. There are significant inter-regional and inter-provincial differences in efficiency of each sub-industry. The distributions of efficiencies of various provinces in five sub-industries are different. No province has always been on the innovation frontier for the entire evaluation period. The province with larger number of years on the frontier generally has the higher efficiency score, although there are some exceptions. Among the provinces on the frontier in various industries, the eastern provinces account for a large proportion.