Country variations in different innovation outputs: The interactive effect of institutional support and human capital

摘要

Innovation is of pivotal importance to economic growth in both developed and developing countries. The current research seeks to provide insights on how human and institutional factors interact to explain country variations in innovation. Using a multiple source, multinational database that covers a wide spectrum of innovation outputs in more than 120 economies in the world from 2011 to 2013, we for the first time examined both the concurrent and predictive associations of the interactive effects of human capital and institutional support with innovation output. Results showed that innovation output is a multi-faceted construct, consisting of at least three aspects: knowledge creation, knowledge impact, and knowledge diffusion. Quality of human capital predicts knowledge creation; institutional support and human capital have additive effects on knowledge impact; and the presence of both human capital and institutional support is required for knowledge diffusion. These results extend past findings on the role of institutions and human capital in innovation and have important implications for national policies of innovation development. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.