Innovation and Human Capital Policy

John van Reenen

No 28713, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: If innovation is to be subsidized, a natural place to start is to increase the quantity and quality of human capital. Innovation, after all, begins with people. Simply stimulating the “demand side” through R&D subsidies and tax breaks may only drive up the price, rather than the volume of research activity. By contrast, increasing the supply of potential inventors can both directly increase innovation and reduce its cost. This paper examines the evidence on human capital policies for stimulating innovation such as expanding the home-grown workforce, fostering immigration, boosting universities and reducing barriers to entry into inventor careers, especially for under-represented groups. The evidence suggests targeting high ability but disadvantaged potential inventors at an early age is likely to have the largest long-run effects on growth.

JEL-codes: O31 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-sbm and nep-ure
Note: PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Innovation and Human Capital Policy , John Van Reenen. in Innovation and Public Policy , Goolsbee and Jones. 2022

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28713.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Innovation and Human Capital Policy (2022)
Working Paper: Innovation and human capital policy (2021)
Working Paper: Innovation and human capital policy (2021)
Working Paper: Innovation and human capital policy (2021)
Working Paper: Innovation and human capital policy (2021)
Working Paper: Innovation and human capital policy (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28713

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28713

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().