Human capital as a long-term driving force for the national independent innovation: Evidence from Japanese innovation transformation

The long-term driving effect of the human capital on the national independent innovation was studied, taking the per capita domestic invention patents granted to the natives as a composite index of the national independent innovation strength, and taking the first principal component of four indexes - the proportion of R&D personnel in a country´s population, the proportion of university and college student enrollment in a country´s population, the enrollment rate of junior middle school graduates and the enrollment rate of senior high school graduates - as a composite index of the national human capital of a country. The Granger causality test result, based on the annual time series data of Japan during its innovation transformation period of 1965 to 2009, showed that the human capital was a long-term driving force for the national independent innovation, and its driving effect lasts for more than seven years. It was implied that a country´s innovation transformation was the result of the long-term accumulation of its human capital.