Abstract: Utilizing China's inter-provincial panel date based on venture capital investment cases and patents, this paper studies the promoting effect of venture capital on regional technological innovation output as well as the technological innovation screening effect of venture capital in the process of “R&D Input - Innovation Output” transformation. The study finds that (1) venture capital boosts China’s regional technological innovation output, and its promoting effect which shows a lagged and inverted U tendency reaches the highest level of significance and innovation effect in one and two-period lag; (2) venture capital has an optimal innovation promoting effect on northwest and northeast regions which are economically and technically under-developed, but does not significantly enhance the innovation output of eastern and middle regions which are economically and technically developed; (3) venture capital plays a screening role in terms of innovation output quality, which effectively restrains the low-quality innovation output represented by design patents and utility model patents but positively enhances the high-quality innovation output represented by invention patents.

Key words: venture capital, technological innovation, patents, screening effect, economic regions