Collaborative Research: Engineering Human Capital in Technology Adoption and Discovery: Impact on Japans Industrialization

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

Human capital is a critical ingredient in the discovery of innovations and adoption of technology, but what type of human capital is most important for such activities, and what are the roles of higher-order technical skills in particular, remain largely unexplored. Japan started its transition to modernity in the late 1870s by building an engineering education system from scratch. It searched for a way to allocate newly minted engineering cadres to the right places given its economic and societal needs, all while facing several practical constraints. This project will conduct an in-depth theoretical and empirical investigation of the process of formation of engineering human capital in late 19th century and early 20th century Japan, and the mechanisms that allocated that human capital. The team will construct and employ a detailed database based on alumni yearbooks to follow the census of degreed Japanese engineers through their careers. In so doing, they will identify work networks and their effects, linking these to the performance of firms, industries, and regions. The project will also investigate how educated engineers contributed to socially beneficial discovery by matching the constructed database to inventors’ names in Japan Patent Office data. Barriers to technology adoption represent a main obstacle to economic development, but we still have little systematic knowledge of the roles performed by the key actor, the engineer. This project examines the process and effects of developing an educated engineering workforce. In-depth examination of the underlying processes and mechanisms will inform contemporary theoretical, policy, and managerial discourse, including valuable lessons for U.S. policymakers. It will also have implications for the global fight against poverty and economic stagnation. This project will explore various issues related to technology discovery and adoption, as well as firm and regional competitiveness, by focusing on the availability and allocation of higher-end technical skills embodied in educated engineers. This will form a richer picture of the sources of industrial and social development. It will also highlight the importance of network effects and the role played by competitive market allocative mechanism. This project, by developing and deploying for quantitative analyses a unique trove of alumni lists and other archival sources in Japan, will make an important contribution to understanding key issues tied to technology adoption, growth, and development. Studying the interactions among technological opportunity, human capital formation, market demand, and institutional rules is a promising way to better understand how nations can both take advantage of existing advanced technologies and develop new ones. Elucidating engineering human capital’s role in the context of late 19th-early 20th century Japan (the first modern industrial economy to establish itself outside of Western Europe and its North American and Australian offshoots) will not just be novel intellectually but will also inform debates about promoting technology adoption and scientific discovery in today’s developing countries. The project will also make publicly available a comprehensive decades-long dataset on engineers, their employers, and networks. The team will broadly disseminate findings through presentations in seminars and conferences as well as through academic publications. The project will also help train graduate students as research assistants and as coauthors on academic papers and will enhance collaboration with Japanese universities and individual scholars through joint work. The database will be made available so others can use it to examine and build additional theories and insights. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.