The role of human capital and innovation in economic development: evidence from post-Malthusian Prussia

The effect of human capital on growth involves multiple channels. On the one hand, an increase in human capital directly affects economic growth by enhancing labor productivity in production. On the other hand, human capital is an important input into R&D and therefore increases labor productivity indirectly by accelerating technological change. In addition, different types of human capital such as basic and higher education or training-on-the-job might play different roles in both production and innovation activities. We merge individual data on valuable patents granted in Prussia in the late nineteenth-century with county-level data on literacy, craftsmanship, secondary schooling, and income tax revenues to explore the complex relationship between various types of human capital, innovation, and income. We find that the Second Industrial Revolution can be seen as a transition period when it comes to the role of human capital. As in the preceding First Industrial Revolution, “useful knowledge” embodied in master craftsmen was related to innovation, especially of independent inventors. As in the subsequent twentieth century, the quality of basic education was associated with both workers’ productivity and firms’ R&D processes. In a final step, we show that literacy had also a negative effect on fertility which increased with innovation. In general, our findings support the notion that the accumulation of basic human capital was crucial for the transition to modern economic growth.     

企业家技术进步路径选择与经济增长

发达国家的知识和技术进步速度越快,发展中国家越是能收到技术模仿的好处,从而带来较高的经济增长率。越是接近技术前沿的发达国家,创新型企业家的作用越大,离技术前沿越远的发展中国家,模仿型企业家的作用往往更明显。发展中国家的企业家通过知识过滤、吸收、模仿、"干中学",不断积累人力资本和物质资本,为自主创新积蓄力量,最终能实现模仿式创新和自主创新的良性互动。     

外资在华技术创新溢出是否促进内资企业技术进步——基于门槛效应的经验分析

利用2010—2019年中国A股上市公司数据,构建面板门槛模型,探讨外资在华技术创新溢出对内资企业技术进步的门槛效应。结果表明,外资在华技术创新溢出自身存在单门槛效应,对内资企业技术进步的影响呈倒U型关系;以行业外资竞争、内资模仿同构和区域知识产权保护为门槛变量发现,仅当外资竞争水平较低、内资模仿同构程度较低以及区域知识产权保护力度较大时,外资在华技术创新溢出才能促进内资企业技术进步,且其阈值效应存在行业和企业产权异质性。     

Growth, distance to frontier and composition of human capital

We examine the contribution of human capital to economy-wide technological improvements through the two channels of innovation and imitation. We develop a theoretical model showing that skilled labor has a higher growth-enhancing effect closer to the technological frontier under the reasonable assumption that innovation is a relatively more skill-intensive activity than imitation. Also, we provide evidence in favor of this prediction using a panel dataset covering 19 OECD countries between 1960 and 2000 and explain why previous empirical research had found no positive relationship between initial schooling level and subsequent growth in rich countries.     

追赶战略、人力资本及地区经济增长趋同——基于教育效率的水平创新模型的实证分析

文章基于一个教育效率的水平创新模型分析了落后地区对发达地区的人力资本与经济发展战略问题,指出人力资本是影响技术吸收与创新能力的主要因素。通常所言的静态比较优势战略无法改变落后地区在人力资本上的比较劣势,因而落后地区也就无法发挥所谓的后发优势进而实现与发达地区间的经济收敛。而只有基于教育质量与人力资本积累效率的提高,实行人力资本的动态比较优势战略或追赶战略才能让落后地区提高学习效率,真正发挥后发优势实现经济赶超。最后文章以中国为例验证了这一结论并简要提出了促进落后地区经济快速增长的政策建议。     

实现技术进步型经济增长的条件、路径和策略研究——基于人力资本投资的视角

提高创新效率和人力资本投资效率,采取渐进式技术进步以及经济危机的爆发和环保要求的提高等等,都可以激励企业家创新和劳动者的人力资本投资,使人力资本与技术进步形成一个良性循环,这决定了技术进步型经济增长的实现。随着创新和人力资本投资的不断进行,生产模式将不断更新,那么前后相继新旧生产模式的生产曲线的包络线就构成了经济增长的路径。发展中国家依靠技术模仿,可以发挥"后发优势"而实现短期高速增长,但是这种增长模式很难持续。采用技术模仿与技术创新相结合的技术进步方式,才是发展中国家实现长期增长和经济赶超的最佳策略。     

The Policy Ramifications of Capital as Ideas

In 1987, Baldwin Ranson wrote about capital and technology in economic growth. Ranson argued that capital should be defined as intangible ideas and technology that are not subject to supply and demand constraints. Thorstein Veblen (1908, 518) described his conception of capital as being “found in possession of something in the way of a body of technological knowledge, – knowledge serviceable and requisite to the quest of a livelihood.” John R. Commons (1934, 662) wrote in a similar vein that “capital is not an accumulation of past products of stored-up labor – these are transitory and aimless – capital is a going plant of industrial knowledge and experience.” More recently, Cesar Hidalgo (2015) and Paul Romer (1990, 1994) have also written about the idea of capital as ideas and the key to economic growth. Hidalgo (2015, 179) states that “the growth of information in the economy, which is ultimately the essence of economic growth, results from the coevolution of our species’ collective computation capacity.” The first section of this article explores the linkages between the older generation and more recent thinkers on the intersection of capital as technology and ideas. The second section explores the policy ramifications of this conceptualization of capital. Romer argues that temporary monopolies are needed to encourage investment in innovation. According to both Veblen and Ranson, these rules do not allow for the full social value of ideas to be utilized. The second part of this article also explores these differences using A. Allan Schmid’s situation-structure-performance (SSP) model.     

Distinguishing Between the Effects of Primary and Post-primary Education on Economic Growth

The paper follows Benhabib and Spiegel (Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 34, 1994:143–73) in examining the effect of human capital accumulation on economic growth. The paper is innovative in two ways. First, it takes the R&D‐based models more seriously. This delivers more structural specifications in which human capital affects growth as an input of final output and as a catalyst of technological innovation and imitation. Second, owing to data availability it is possible to disaggregate human capital and assign different roles to primary and post‐primary education. Regression estimates obtained from these alternative specifications suggest that the relative contribution of human capital to technology adoption and final output production vary by country wealth. More importantly, regression estimates suggest that primary education contributes mainly to production of final output, whereas post‐primary education contributes mainly to innovation and imitation of technology.     

我国加工贸易的技术进步效应研究

我国的加工贸易将国际贸易和外商直接投资紧密地联系在一起。加工贸易具有显著的技术进步效应。加工贸易带动了机械设备等资本品和中间产品的进口,直接带来了新产品、新技术并建立起新的产业。加工贸易从国内和国际两个市场强化了企业之间的竞争,增强了企业的模仿能力,加深了企业之间的联系,增加了人力资本的流动。     

Migration, human capital accumulation and economic development

We study how the possibility of migration changes the composition of human capital in sending countries, and how this affects development. In our model, growth is driven by productivity growth, which occurs via imitation or innovation. Both activities use the same types of skilled labour as input, albeit with different intensities. Heterogenous agents accumulate skills in response to economic incentives. Migration distorts these incentives, and the accumulation of human capital. This slows down, or even hinders, economic development. The effect is stronger, the farther away the country is from the technological frontier.     

Migration,human capital accumulation and economic development

We study how the possibility of migration changes the composition of human capital in sending countries, and how this affects development. In our model, growth is driven by productivity growth, which occurs via imitation or innovation. Both activities use the same types of skilled labour as input, albeit with different intensities. Heterogenous agents accumulate skills in response to economic incentives. Migration distorts these incentives, and the accumulation of human capital. This slows down, or even hinders, economic development. The effect is stronger, the farther away the country is from the technological frontier.     

Experiencing change and the evolution of adaptive skills: Implications for economic growth

We distinguish learning in a static environment from that in a dynamic environment to show the existence of an important interaction between the development of new technologies and human capital accumulation. Because technological progress creates a more dynamic environment, it complements education in the production of human capital by enhancing adaptive skills. Higher levels of adaptability and human capital in turn determine the profitability of new inventions and the incentive to invest in new R&D. Differences in the history of technological progress produce different levels of adaptability and our results suggest why countries that have comparable levels of education and per capita incomes may differ significantly in their growth performance.     

The effects of human capital composition on technological convergence

This paper empirically investigates whether the contribution of human capital to productivity growth depends on the composition of human capital and proximity to the technology frontier in a panel of 87 sample countries over the period 1970–2004. It tests the hypothesis that primary and secondary education is more suitable for imitation whereas tertiary education is more appropriate for innovation. The results show that the growth enhancing effects of higher education increase with proximity to the technology frontier only for high and medium income countries.     

Influence of Technology Change on High-Quality Economic Development in China

Since the implementation of the reform and opening up policy, rapid growth has been witnessed in the Chinese economy, thanks to the introduced technological progress as well as the institutional advantages of the country. However, while this exogenous technological progress promotes economic growth quantitatively, it is, unfortunately, not conducive to the improvement of the quality of the economy. Structural imbalances have thus been produced, which hinder the high-quality development of the economy of the country. Besides, by way of the “supply and demand rebalance mechanism,” “resource optimized allocation mechanism,” and “new and old kinetic energy conversion mechanism,” original technological progress can effectively push forward the quality change, efficiency change and dynamic change in the economy, thereby promoting the innovation, coordination, greenness and openness as well as the shared development of the economy. Therefore, the current technological transformation in China needs to change from the second stage—the stage of transition from the introduced technological progress mode to the original technological progress mode then to the third stage—the stage mainly based on the original technological progress, which is the key to the successful transformation of the Chinese economy from the high-speed growth phase to the high-quality development phase.     

Technological regimes and demand structure in the evolution of the pharmaceutical industry

This paper examines how the nature of the technological regime governing innovative activities and the structure of demand interact in determining market structure, with specific reference to the pharmaceutical industry. The key question concerns the observation that—despite high degrees of R&D and marketing-intensity—concentration has been consistently low during the whole evolution of the industry. Standard explanations of this phenomenon refer to the random nature of the innovative process, the patterns of imitation, and the fragmented nature of the market into multiple, independent submarkets. We delve deeper into this issue by using an improved version of our previous “history-friendly” model of the evolution of pharmaceuticals. Thus, we explore the way in which changes in the technological regime and/or in the structure of demand may generate or not substantially higher degrees of concentration. The main results are that, while technological regimes remain fundamental determinants of the patterns of innovation, the demand structure plays a crucial role in preventing the emergence of concentration through a partially endogenous process of discovery of new submarkets. However, it is not simply market fragmentation as such that produces this result, but rather the entity of the “prize” that innovators can gain relative to the overall size of the market. Further, the model shows that emerging industry leaders are innovative early entrants in large submarkets.     

知识产权保护与我国农业技术进步的经济分析

农业技术进步是农业效益和经济增长的引擎,可以通过自主创新和模仿先进农业技术获取。通过基于扩展的内生技术进步模型,考虑了知识产权保护在鼓励模仿先进农业技术和自主创新两难中的权衡,认为知识产权保护制度对我国农业技术进步的影响主要取决于农业技术差距,并据此结论提出了相关政策建议。     

Is Embodied Technology the Result of Upstream R&D? Industry-Level Evidence

This paper provides an exploratory analysis of whether data on the research and development (R&D) spending directed at particular technological/product fields can be used to measure industry-level capital-embodied technological change. Evidence from the patent literature suggests that the R&D directed at a product, as the main input into the “innovation” production function, is proportional to the value of the innovations in that product. I confirm this hypothesis by showing that the decline in the relative price of a good is positively correlated with the R&D directed at that product. The hypothesis implies that the technological change, or innovation, embodied in an industry's capital is proportional to the R&D that is done (“upstream”) by the economy as a whole on each of the capital goods that a (“downstream”) industry purchases. Using R&D data from the National Science Foundation, I construct measures of capital-embodied R&D. I find they have a strong effect on conventionally measured total-factor productivity growth, a phenomenon that seems to be due partly to the mismeasurement of quality change in the capital stock and partly to a positive correlation between embodied and disembodied technological change. Finally, I find the cross-industry variation in empirical estimates of embodied technological change accord with the cross-industry variation in embodied R&D. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: O3.     

Catch-up and fall-back through innovation and imitation

Will fast growing emerging economies sustain rapid growth rates until they “catch-up” to the technology frontier? Are there incentives for some developed countries to free-ride off of innovators and optimally “fall-back” relative to the frontier? This paper models agents growing as a result of investments in innovation and imitation. Imitation facilitates technology diffusion, with the productivity of imitation modeled by a catch-up function that increases with distance to the frontier. The resulting equilibrium is an endogenous segmentation between innovators and imitators, where imitating agents optimally choose to “catch-up” or “fall-back” to a productivity ratio below the frontier.     

SOUTHERN INNOVATION AND REVERSE KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVERS: A DYNAMIC FDI MODEL*

We develop a general equilibrium model of endogenous innovation and foreign direct investment (FDI). In the benchmark model, Northern firms innovate with the help of localized spillovers, and a share of new products is transferred to Southern production via FDI. An increase in Southern imitation risk reduces this share. In the extended model, we permit higher‐cost Southern innovation, which yields inefficient specialization in both regions and reduces global growth. However, it generates a U‐shaped relationship between FDI and local imitation. We also allow for “reverse” spillovers in knowledge to Northern innovation, which partially restore global efficiency and growth.     

“一带一路”背景下新时代科技创新理论及实践路径探究

以习近平关于科技创新重要论述为核心内容的新时代科技创新理论与“一带一路”理论之间存在科学的内在联系，具有高度的契合性。一方面，新时代科技创新理论作为当前指导我国科技创新活动的重要行动指南，对深入推进“一带一路”建设中的国际科技创新合作发挥着重要指导作用。另一方面，“一带一路”倡议是国际科技创新合作的主要平台，是构建人类科技命运共同体的桥梁。从这个意义上说，没有国际科技创新合作，便没有世界科技命运共同体目标的实现。从战略高度和长远角度看，在新时代科技创新理论指引下，中国倡导的“一带一路”科技创新合作必将成为全球基础科学联合研究、技术创新合作的重要范本和典型，中国也将为世界科技发展与革新作出更大贡献，为人类科技文明发展与进步作出具有中国特色的贡献。