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Education and Innovation: The Long Shadow of the Cultural Revolution

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  • Zhangkai Huang
  • Gordon M. Phillips
  • Jialun Yang
  • Yi Zhang

Abstract

The Cultural Revolution deprived Chinese students of the opportunity to receive higher education for 10 years when colleges and universities were closed from 1966-1976. We examine the human capital cost of this loss of education on subsequent innovation by firms, and ask if it impacted firms more than 30 years later. We examine the innovation of firms with CEOs who turned 18 during the Cultural Revolution, which sharply reduced their chances of attending college. Using multiple approaches to control for selection and endogeneity, including an instrument based on whether the CEO turned 18 during the Cultural Revolution and a regression discontinuity approach, we show that Chinese firms led by CEOs without a college degree spend less on R&D, generate fewer patents, and receive fewer citations to these patents.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhangkai Huang & Gordon M. Phillips & Jialun Yang & Yi Zhang, 2020. "Education and Innovation: The Long Shadow of the Cultural Revolution," NBER Working Papers 27107, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27107
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    Cited by:

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    2. Meiling Kang & Yucheng Li & Zhongkuang Zhao & Minjuan Zheng & Han Wu, 2022. "Does Human Capital Homogeneously Improve the Corporate Innovation: Evidence from China’s Higher Education Expansion in the Late 1990s," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-19, September.
    3. Jiekuan Zhang & Yan Zhang, 2023. "Examining the effects of economic growth pressure on green total factor productivity: evidence from China," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 56(6), pages 4309-4337, December.
    4. Yang, Bo & Ma, Fang & Deng, Weihua & Pi, Yang, 2022. "Digital inclusive finance and rural household subsistence consumption in China," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 627-642.
    5. Joan Costa-i-Font & Jorge García-Hombrados & Anna Nicińska, 2020. "Long-Lasting Effects of Communist Indoctrination in School: Evidence from Poland," CESifo Working Paper Series 8766, CESifo.
    6. Changrong Wang & Lufeng Gou & Xuemei Li, 2022. "Is Education Beneficial to Environmentally Friendly Behaviors? Evidence from CEOs," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(18), pages 1-21, September.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D

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