International R&D spillovers revisited: Human capital as an absorptive capacity for foreign technology

Abstract

This paper examines aspects of R&D spillovers across countries, in particular, the role of international trade and human capital as the catalysts for international diffusion of technology. We present a new way of measuring foreign R&D stocks embodied in foreign intermediate goods and capital equipment, which we argue is free from the criticism of previous measures. With the pooled panel data spanning 1970 through 1995 for 103 countries, we find that the effects of foreign R&D on total factor productivity growth of both industrial countries and developing countries are substantial and that human capital is the most influential channel for absorbing foreign R&D spillovers.