Intangible Capital Investment Research Articles

Determinants of intangible capital investment in Vietnam: A firm‐level analysis

AbstractIntangible capital is an important growth driver in the modern knowledge‐based and innovation‐driven economy. While there seems to be sufficient support for the role of intangible capital from developed economies, evidence from fast‐growing developing countries is much more limited. This paper explores the heterogeneous pattern and potential determinants of firm‐level intangible capital investment in Vietnam. We found that firm size, human capital, and information and communication technology increase the likelihood to invest in intangible capital. Additionally, an inverted‐U shaped relation is identified between market competition and intangible capital investment: Moderate levels of market competition induce firms in Vietnam to invest more in innovative activities, but the effect of stronger competition diminishes.

Accumulating human capital: Corporate innovation and firm value

AbstractWe empirically document that industries that are more R&D intensive exhibit disproportionately greater innovation quantity and better innovation quality in economies with more human capital. Firm‐level evidence confirms that innovation is an important channel through which firm responds to labor market conditions. Further analyses show that in economies with greater human capital, firms better able to innovate exhibit larger increase in labor productivity and capital–labor ratio, an effect driven by deceases in employment and increase in intangible capital investment. By facilitating the adjustment in input mix and capital structure, human capital accumulation allows firms with high innovation ability to enhance firm equity value and improve firm performance.

IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION AND INVESTMENTS IN INTANGIBLE CAPITAL ON THE NON-FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF FIRMS IN SLOVENIA

Article examines the impact of digitalisation and intangible capital investment on the non-financial performance of firms in Slovenia. Article examines the relationship between: (1) digitalisation and firms’ nonfinancial performance; (2) digitalisation and firms’ attitude to digitalisation; (3) investments in intangible capital and firms’ non-financial performance; where we (4) also expect differences by industry and between firms operating in global value chains. Considering survey data, the SEM approach shows that, digitalisation and intangible investment both have positive effects on non-financial performance. Level of digitalisation depends on the importance attributed to digitalisation, whereas the importance of digitalisation depends on the expected long-term benefits of digitalisation for the firm. Level of digitalisation is dependent on the anticipated long-term benefits of digitalisation. These have a positive, yet non-significant impact on a firm’s level of digitalisation. Despite business agility having an impact on the importance of digitalisation for businesses that is less than the expected benefits, it is still highly significant. Other results were not statistically significant. Keywords: intangible capital, digitalisation, firm performance

Unions and investment in intangible capital

Unions and investment in intangible capital

The Role of Intangible Capital Investment and Intangible Assets in Improving Competitiveness

Based on international literature and data, this essay examines the conditions for improving competitiveness in Hungary in relation to intangible assets and capital investment. The link between productivity – as the basis for competitiveness – and intangible capital investment is also discussed. The essay argues that, although there is no consensus on the interpretation of the concepts examined and further analysis and modelling are needed, the relationships presented suggest that higher levels of intangible asset and capital investment would contribute to improving the productivity and competitiveness of the Hungarian economy. First, because this would improve the overall operational efficiency of tangible investments, and second, because it would support the transition to a knowledge economy, the key condition for boosting competitiveness.

The role of intangibles in firm-level productivity – evidence from Germany

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the impact of intangibles on firm-level productivity. Unlike previous studies we capture all dimensions of intangibles for both goods-producing and service industries. Based on data from the German part of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) for the period 2006 to 2018, our results show that intangible capital investment is equal in size to investment in tangible capital since the early 2000s. We find a highly significant and positive relationship between intangible capital and output, with elasticities in line with previous findings for other large EU economies. This positive impact of intangibles on the firm-level productivity is driven by non-R&D intangibles, notably software & databases, training and advertising & marketing. While this finding holds for both goods and service sectors, we find that non-R&D intangibles impact firm-level productivity more strongly in the services. Investment in R&D affects productivity only in the high-tech manufacturing sector.

Financing innovation and enterprises' efficiency of technological innovation in the internet industry: Evidence from China.

This study empirically examined the impact of financing innovation on technological innovation efficiency of select internet companies, that were affiliated with China between 2008 and 2017. Analysis was based on their patent and annual report data and used multiple input-output SFA model, system GMM, and panel fixed-effect model. The results are as follows. (1) There is significant variation in overall technological innovation efficiency of listed companies in the internet industry, and there is a downward trend. The technological innovation efficiency of business that use financing innovation methods is higher than those that do not. (2) The number of patents and intangible capital investment of internet businesses increase obviously every year, but there is no corresponding increase in the efficiency of technological innovation, and little intangible capital investment of non-financing innovation businesses. Thus, determining how to effectively improve the overall quality of patents and the efficiency of intangible capital investment is essential to improve the efficiency of technological innovation for Chinese internet businesses. (3) There is a term mismatch in the investment and financing of internet businesses in China. The financing structure between the financing innovation and non-financing innovation businesses has different impacts on the efficiency of technological innovation. And nowadays, more financing channels are short-term debt financing channels which invest in projects to improve the efficiency of technological innovation due to the pressure of debt repayment and the need to protect shareholders' interests. (4) In the panel regression, the coefficients of Icd and Roa are significantly negative, suggesting that the investment efficiency of internet businesses needs to be improved.

The Cost of Innovation and Decreasing Book Equity of U.S. Firms

This study documents that book equity of U.S. firms has decreased dramatically over time and such decrease is systematic across various industries and firm size. Our analysis shows that intangible capital investment explains a significant portion of the decrease in book equity even after controlling for concurrent effect of leverage and profitability on book equity, and the effect of intangible capital investment on book equity increased in recent years. Further analysis shows that intangible capital contributes to decrease in book equity mostly through the channel of changing firm characteristics rather than changing sensitivity over time. Our findings suggest that investors must incorporate the effect of intangible capital investment into their valuation analysis, as indexes or investment strategies relying on indicators constructed by book equity may be biased and misleading.

Socially Responsible Customers and Intangible Investment

Intangible capital has become an increasingly important factor for production in the knowledge economy. We use a large sample of U.S. firms and their major customers to test whether the presence of socially responsible customers can have an influence on suppliers’ intangible capital investment decisions. Our findings suggest that the social performance of major customers has a positive impact on the suppliers’ intangible investment, but the effect on their physical investment is marginal. When suppliers gain a new major customer with better social performance than their existing customers, they invest in more intangible assets. The results are robust when controlling for industry and year fixed effects, customer-base concentration, and the firm characteristics of both suppliers and customers, including Tobin’s q, total assets, financial leverage, sales growth rate, and profitability. Our findings are consistent with the implicit contract theory, which suggests that customers’ social performance affects how trustworthy their implicit commitments are perceived to be by their suppliers and thus has an impact on the suppliers’ intangible investment.

Wealth Inequality in the Long Run: A Schumpeterian Growth Perspective

Abstract This paper extends the analysis of the wealth–income ratio based on the neoclassical model in a Schumpeterian growth framework in which savings are channelled to both tangible and intangible capital investment. Using historical data for 21 OECD countries over the period 1860–2015, we find that the wealth–income ratio and, hence, wealth inequality, is negatively related to the rate of economic growth and positively related to the rates of investment in intangible and tangible assets, as predicted by the theory. Accounting for the innovation-induced counteracting growth effect on the wealth–income ratio, we show that the net effect of investment in intangibles on wealth inequality is positive. Our estimates suggest that intangibles have been a contributing factor in wealth inequality since 1860 and that the marked increase in the investment in intangible assets in the post–WWII period has been a significant driver of wealth inequality since the 1970s.

Alternative facts regarding the labor share

In this paper, I examine the impact of alternative hypotheses about the measurement of firms' investments in intangible capital on the labor share and markups of price over marginal costs.

Intangible factor and idiosyncratic volatility puzzles

In this paper, we explore whether intangible capital (IC) can help explain idiosyncratic volatility puzzles. The underlying assumption is that firms produce and accumulate IC as part of their normal operations. Investments in IC can either raise a company's future ability to produce or lower its cost of production. The applied model finds empirical support for the hypothesis that IC can help explain idiosyncratic volatility puzzles, especially for firms with higher IC-to-total asset ratios. This paper contributes to existing literature on idiosyncratic volatility puzzles from an IC investment perspective and provides implications for IC on stock markets.

The timing of optimal capital income tax reforms: the role of intangible capital investment

This paper studies the role of intangible capital investment in the timing of optimal capital income tax reforms. Within an infinitely lived worker–capitalist model as in Judd (J Public Econ 28:59–83, 1985), we consider two different economies: one in which capitalists devote physical investment, management time and intangible capital investment to build capital; and a second one in which capitalists do not need to devote intangible capital investment. We perform a Pareto-improving Ramsey tax reform and compare the optimal paths of corporate and dividend taxes during the transition with and without intangible capital. Without intangible investment, optimal corporate income taxes are set at 100% for 10 years and then fall to 0%, while optimal dividend taxes are set to 78% initially and follow a steep decline to 37% over 10 years. With intangible investment, optimal corporate income taxes are set to − 20% initially and slowly converge toward zero, while dividend income taxes are set to 61% initially and follow a slow decline to 27% over 50 years.

Productivity Drag from Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Japan

Productivity growth in Japan, as in most advanced economies, has moderated. This paper finds supportive evidence for the important role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in explaining Japan’s modest productivity growth. Results show a substantial dispersion in firm-level productivity growth across sectors and even across firms within the same sector. SMEs, on average, exhibit lower productivity growth than non-SMEs in Japan, with smaller and older SMEs showing particularly low productivity growth. Estimates suggest that boosting productivity growth in all of the worst-performing SMEs could improve overall productivity growth by up to 1.8 percentage points. The SME credit guarantee system, SME financing constraints, demographic factors, and lack of intangible capital investment are discussed as contributors to the slow productivity growth of Japan’s small and old SMEs.

Intangible capital distribution in China

This paper aims to examine the distribution dynamics of intangible capital investment across Chinese regions and hence contributes to the understanding of China’s regional development. A nonparametric approach is adopted to investigate the long-run distribution dynamics. Intertemporal dynamics and spatial conditional dynamics are analysed to explore the impacts of the global financial crisis and knowledge spill-over on intangibles’ distribution. It is shown that the formation of convergence clusters persists in the long run. High levels of investment tend to be concentrated in a few coastal regions while investment in most Chinese regions is projected to be low. External shocks exert an adverse effect: The post-global financial crisis transition dynamics indicate that most regions tend to converge towards a lower level than the pre-crisis dynamics imply. Finally, knowledge spill-over in the context of intangibles is identified to be an important factor that helps mitigate regional imbalance.

Financing intangible capital

Firms finance intangible investment through employee compensation contracts. In a dynamic model in which intangible capital is embodied in a firm’s employees, we analyze the firm’s optimal decisions on intangible capital investment, employee compensation contracts, and financial leverage. Employee financing is achieved by delaying wage payments in the form of future claims. We show that intangible capital investment is highly correlated with employee financing but not with debt issuance or regular equity refinancing. In our quantitative analysis, we show that this new channel of employee financing explains the cross-industry differences in leverage and financing patterns.

Broad-based intangibles as generators of growth in Europe

ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes broad performance-based measures of intangibles in European Union countries to find new sources of growth and shows that intangible capital (IC)-driven growth was halted in European industries during the 2008–2013 financial crisis period. Much of this IC, such as purchased organizational, research and development (R&D) and information and communication technology capital, is unaccounted for in systems of national accounts, so that total IC investment is 29.6% of value added, with R&D having the lowest gross domestic product share at 5.0%. On average, deteriorating IC growth has decreased labor productivity by −2.9% annually. Policies fostering multifactor productivity growth have been strongly biased and have ignored the loss of those skills necessary for long-term growth. During 2008–2013, innovation thus failed to compensate for Europe’s dwindling fixed-capital-intensive manufacturing and job losses, but broad-based IC offers a roadmap for recovery by relying on an increasing role for IC-producing services.

Financial Frictions and the Great Productivity Slowdown

We study the role of financial frictions in explaining the sharp and persistent productivity growth slowdown in advanced economies after the 2008 global financial crisis. Using a rich cross-country, firm-level data set and exploiting quasi-experimental variation in firm-level exposure to the crisis, we find that the combination of pre-existing firm-level financial fragilities and tightening credit conditions made an important contribution to the post-crisis productivity slowdown. Specifically: (i) firms that entered the crisis with weaker balance sheets experienced decline in total factor productivity growth relative to their less vulnerable counterparts after the crisis; (ii) this decline was larger for firms located in countries where credit conditions tightened more; (iii) financially fragile firms cut back on intangible capital investment compared to more resilient firms, which is one plausible way through which financial frictions undermined productivity. All of these effects are highly persistent and quantitatively large—possibly accounting on average for about a third of the post-crisis slowdown in within-firm total factor productivity growth. Furthermore, our results are not driven by more vulnerable firms being less productive or having experienced slower productivity growth before the crisis, or differing from less vulnerable firms along other dimensions.

Financial Frictions and the Great Productivity Slowdown

We study the role of financial frictions in explaining the sharp and persistent productivity growthslowdown in advanced economies after the 2008 global financial crisis. Using a rich cross-country,firm-level data set and exploiting quasi-experimental variation in firm-level exposure to the crisis,we find that the combination of pre-existing firm-level financial fragilities and tightening creditconditions made an important contribution to the post-crisis productivity slowdown. Specifically:(i) firms that entered the crisis with weaker balance sheets experienced decline in total factorproductivity growth relative to their less vulnerable counterparts after the crisis; (ii) this declinewas larger for firms located in countries where credit conditions tightened more; (iii) financiallyfragile firms cut back on intangible capital investment compared to more resilient firms, which isone plausible way through which financial frictions undermined productivity. All of these effectsare highly persistent and quantitatively large-possibly accounting on average for about a third ofthe post-crisis slowdown in within-firm total factor productivity growth. Furthermore, our resultsare not driven by more vulnerable firms being less productive or having experienced slowerproductivity growth before the crisis, or differing from less vulnerable firms along otherdimensions.

Financing Intangible Capital

Firms finance intangible investment through employee compensation contracts. In a dynamic model in which intangible capital is embodied in a firm's employees, we analyze the firm's optimal decisions of intangible investment, employee compensation contracts, and financial leverage. Employee financing is achieved by delaying wage payments in the form of future claims. We document that intangible capital investment is highly correlated with employee financing, but not with debt issuance or regular equity refinancing. In the quantitative analysis, we show that this new channel of employee financing can explain the cross-industry differences in leverage and financing patterns.