 Human capital and trademarks: Evidence from higher education expansion in ChinaLi Shu and Wei Wang Research Policy, 2023, vol. 52, issue 10 Abstract: This paper investigates how human capital affects trademark applications at the firm level. We adopt a difference-in-differences strategy to examine the impact of human capital on trademark applications, taking advantage of a unique natural experiment in China that expanded higher education enrollment substantially in 1999. We find firms in industries with higher human capital intensities filed for more trademarks after 2003 than they did in prior years. We then investigate the mechanism through which human capital enhancement causes more trademark applications. We find that firms in industries with higher human capital intensities tend to invest more in R&D and worker training programs. We next find that firms that spend more on R&D and training programs tend to develop more new products. We also find firms that have more new products file for more trademark applications. The main policy implication of our empirical results is that encouraging human capital enhancement can generate more innovative products and trademarks. Keywords: Human capital intensity; Trademark applications; New products; Innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:52:y:2023:i:10:s0048733323001531 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2023.104869 Access Statistics for this article Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier |
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