This paper investigates the relationship between the social inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and technological innovation. It empirically establishes that LGBT inclusion helps foster human capital skills, thus strengthening national innovative capacity. Exploiting cross-country data, this research provides suggestive evidence that social tolerance towards homosexuality is positively correlated with the economic complexity index, a novel measure of cross-country differences in innovative capabilities. Individual-level analyses, based on data from the World Values Survey, reveal that surveyed respondents who self-report tolerance towards homosexual acts tend to have positive attitudes towards technological innovation, ceteris paribus. This lends credence to the international evidence. Further analyses indicate that the link between LGBT inclusion and innovation is partially mediated through the accumulation of human capital. The main findings suggest that the social exclusion of LGBT people, at least to some extent, impedes long-run economic development by hindering innovative activities.

本文调查了女同性恋、男同性恋、双性恋和跨性别 (LGBT) 人群的社会包容与技术创新之间的关系。它从经验上证明 LGBT 包容有助于培养人力资本技能，从而加强国家创新能力。利用跨国数据，这项研究提供了暗示性证据，表明社会对同性恋的容忍度与经济复杂性指数呈正相关，经济复杂性指数是衡量跨国创新能力差异的新指标。根据世界价值观调查的数据，个人层面的分析表明，自我报告对同性恋行为容忍的受访者往往对技术创新持积极态度，其他情况不变. 这为国际证据提供了可信度。进一步的分析表明，LGBT 包容与创新之间的联系部分是通过人力资本的积累来调节的。主要发现表明，对 LGBT 人群的社会排斥至少在一定程度上通过阻碍创新活动来阻碍长期经济发展。