Data and Code：State-orchestrated industrial-chain coordination and innovation in critical core technologies: Evidence from China's Chain Leader Policy

As the Chain Leader Policy was first introduced in 2017, six years of pre-policy data are included to ensure a relatively balanced comparison before and after policy implementation. Accordingly, the sample period spans from 2011 to 2023.

The study focuses on all A-share listed firms in China, applying the following screening criteria: (i) firms in the financial sector are excluded due to their distinct regulatory environment; (ii) firms designated as ST or *ST are removed to avoid financial distress bias; and (iii) all continuous variables are winsorized at the 1st and 99th percentiles to mitigate the influence of outliers. After these adjustments, the final dataset consists of an unbalanced panel of 14,987 firm-year observations from 3,703 unique firms.