This paper explores the interaction between human capital and innovations in the process of economic growth. Using a model of endogenous economic growth, the focus of our analysis is on the incentives to acquire human capital and how they are affected by taxes on human capital and other policy instruments. In contrast to many other growth models we find that the taxation on human capital has a substantial negative effect on the accumulation of it. This in turn lowers the income growth rate. While subsidies to research and to intermediate inputs have positive effects on growth (and must be strictly positive in social optimum), they do not necessarily imply that there will be larger stock of human capital in the economy. If the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is sufficiently low, these policy instruments stimulate growth by inducing a reallocation of a shrinking stock of human capital in the direction of research.