本文使用中国283个地级城市2001年-2011年的面板数据，研究市场环境和知识产权保护力度对于创新活动的影响。研究结果表明，技术市场需求所产生的“示范效应”和知识产权保护力度的“保护效应”是决定区域创新水平的重要因素：仅包含这两种效应的基准计量模型可解释区域创新活动方差的3/4！而这两种效应是通过直接增加研发活动投入力度而提升创新水平的。上述结论在考虑了文献中影响创新的其他因素后仍然稳健。因此，坚持“依法治国”，建设公平竞争的市场环境，是提升创新水平，促进中国产业升级和经济转型的重要措施。

This paper uses the panel data of 283 prefecture-level cities during 2001-2011 to explore the role of market environment and intellectual property rights protection in regional innovation activities. Our empirical results show that both the Demonstration effect which is stemmed from the demand in technology markets and the protection effect which measures the degree of intellectual property right protection are important determinants of regional innovation. In other words, those two effects alone could explain 3/4 of the variance in regional innovation activities. We showed that, those two effects influence the innovation by directly raising the input of R&D. Those results are robust even we controlled other variables that are mentioned in the literature. We conclude that promoting the rule of law and building a fairly competitive market would be essential to increase the innovation level, promote China's industry upgrade and economy transformation.