International Comparision Of Knowledge Capital’s Input And Output

In the knowledge economy times, the accumulation of national wealth and economic growth are increasingly dependent on the creation and application of knowledge. Now, intellectual capital has become an important factor in promoting social development and the core content which determines and measures a country or region’s international competitiveness. In the global innovation-driven process of social development, the study of input and output effects of intellectual capital is of great guiding significance.This paper argues that a country or region’s intellectual capital consist of domestic intellectual capital and international knowledge spillovers in an open economy. Domestic knowledge capital includes human capital and R&D capital, international knowledge spillovers includes R&D capital spillovers through international trade channel, FDI channel and Internet channel. After the descriptive analysis of the current situation of intellectual capital, based on the expanded Cobb-Douglas model, we test the output effects on TFP of different intellectual capitals by using1997-2010panel data of the17countries of G20. The research finds that: domestic R&D capital, human capital and R&D capital spillover through international trade promote total factor productivity growth by promoting technical progress. R&D capital spillover through FDI plays a negative role. The effect of R&D capital spillover through the Internet is not significant. The absorption effect of human capital on the international knowledge needs to be improved.The results also show that the impacts of intellectual capital on TFP in countries at different levels are not the same. For G7countries, the productivity increase relys mainly on domestic R&D capital investment. The roles of other types of intellectual capitals are not obvious. For the newly industrialized countries, the productivity is promoted by domestic R&D capital, human capital and R&D capital spillover through international trade. R&D capital spillover through FDI plays a negative impact on productivity. R&D capital spillover through the Internet is not significant. For the BRIC countries, the impacts of domestic R&D capital and human capital on productivity are positive, and other intellectual capitals’ effects are not obvious.