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Abstract
Using Chinese provincial data from 1997 to 2006, we examine the role of education in regional innovation activities. We test the spatial autocorrelation of provincial innovative activities and find significant support for it in the data, suggesting the need to incorporate spatial dependence in estimating the impact of education on innovation. We find that workers’ tertiary education is significantly and positively related to provincial innovative activities measured by invention patent applications per capita. The result does not vary when spatial dependence is incorporated in the estimation. Thus, we find strong and robust evidence for the prediction of the endogenous growth theory about the positive effect of human capital on innovation.
Acknowledgements
We thank the special issue guest editors, the two anonymous referees and the participants of the Chinese Economists Society Macao conference for their helpful comments.
Notes
1. The results are available from the authors.
2. Because of the limited length of the paper, these results are not reported but are available from the authors upon request.
3. Data source: China Education Statistics Yearbooks (2006).
4. For brevity, these results are not reported but are available from the authors upon request.