How do human capital and R&D structure facilitate FDI knowledge spillovers to local firm innovation? a panel threshold approach

Abstract This paper examines how local firms’ structure of human capital and R while above the second threshold, the FDI turns to an insignificant impact. Besides, when R otherwise, the effect of FDI is insignificantly negative. Our findings highlight the importance of human capital and R&D structures in local firms’ absorptive capacity. Local organizations need to keep diversifying their human capital and R&D strategies to learn from FDI knowledge but avoid allocating their efforts evenly upon sub-categories within the two resources.