Study On The Mediating Effect Of Human Capital Between Physical Capital Investment And Technological Innovation Capability

Technological progress is the internal impetus of economic development and national competitiveness. Most substantial advance in technology depends on technological innovation. Since the reform and open policy being carried out, innovation inputs has been continuously increased, and thus, both innovation output and capability have been significantly improved. But the big gap between China and other technologically-advanced nations is still waiting to be narrowed, so are the output efficiency of physical capital and self-innovation ability.As is known to all, the mode of driving innovation with pure physical capital investment is unsustainable. Based on the jointly endogenous mechanism of human capital and physical capital, this paper probed into the mediating effect of human capital between physical capital and technological innovation ability.Analyzing the provincial data of China from 2002 to 2012 with casual steps approach,it was found true that both general and specific human capital play a mediating role between physical capital and technological innovation ability;the mediating effect of specific human capital,of which the ratio of indirect effect in total effect is 22.278%, is much higher than that of general human capital.The conclusion suggests that at the present stage,a large proportion of our accumulated innovation ability should owe its success to the perfect match and mutual promotion of physical capital and specific human capital,which fully aroused the output potential in the innovation inputs.Considering the influence of wage level on the accumulation of human capital and the unbalanced development of regional innovation capability,this paper further discussed the moderating effect of wage level to the mediating roles of both human capital and the regional disparity of mediating effect. The result shows that both the two mediators are moderated by wage level,but this effect is fully exerted especially in the transformation mechanism of special human capital.With higher wage,the mediating effect would be greater. Meanwhile, the regional distribution based on mediation degree from high to low is the east region, the central part region and the west region, the effect size is 32.916%,24.252% and 15.379% in the three respective regions. It proves that the central and west region of China still haven’t break away from the extensive pattern, while the eastern China is turning on the intensive innovation mode mainly pushed by human capital.