Intangible Investment and Firm Performance

Nathan Chappell and Adam Jaffe
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Suzi Kerr

No 16_14, Working Papers from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research

Abstract: We combine survey and administrative data for about 13,000 firms from 2005 to 2013 to study the inter-relationships among firm characteristics, intangible investment and firm performance. We find that firm size is associated with higher intangible investment, while firm age, very low competition (‘captive market’) and very high competition (‘many competitors, none dominant’) are associated with lower intangible investment. Relating intangible investment to subsequent firm performance, we find that higher investment is associated with higher labour and capital input and higher revenue, relative to what would otherwise have been predicted. We also find that higher investment is associated with higher firm-reported employee and customer satisfaction, but is not associated with higher productivity or profitability. While we cannot estimate a causal model, the evidence suggests that intangible investment is associated with firm strategies related to growth and possibly to ‘soft’ performance objectives, but not to productivity or profitability.

Keywords: Intangible investment; productivity; firm performance; industrial policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 D24 L21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2016-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-eff, nep-hrm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://motu-www.motu.org.nz/wpapers/16_14.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Intangible Investment and Firm Performance (2018)
Working Paper: Intangible Investment and Firm Performance (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mtu:wpaper:16_14

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maxine Watene (info@motu.org.nz).