Abstract:

As a combination of science, technology, talent and innovation, higher education is an important factor affecting firms' export innovation. By exploiting higher education expansion, this paper employs difference-in-differences estimation to accurately evaluate the causal effect of human capital expansion on firms' new product exports. We find that:(1) from the perspective of product life-cycle, human capital expansion effectively enhances firms' new product exports, which is robust after many identifying hypothesis tests and other robustness tests. (2) Human capital expansion, through imported intermediate inputs' variety intensity conversion effect and research and development intensity, technology intensity and capital intensity enhancement effects, has promoted firms' new product exports. (3) For foreign-invested firms, resource–concentrated firms, firms in cities with abundant higher education resources, and firms in areas with higher degrees of marketization, the effect of human capital expansion on firms' new product exports is more pronounced. Our study provides strong theoretical evidence for the policy effect of China's higher education on exported product structure and is of great significance for enhancing "high–quality development" and promoting "high–level opening–up".

Key words:

human capital, import factor intensive, new product export, product life-cycle