 Potential impact of the digital economy on accounting: the challenge of intangible assets’ recognitionAnne Jeny Chapter 27 in Handbook on Intangibles, 2026, pp 507-528 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: The digitalisation and the dematerialisation of the economy are under way, but what impact will this have on accounting? I aim to shed light on this issue by studying the possible accounting implications of the digital economy and their impact on the role of intangible assets’ recognition and valuation. This chapter focuses first on identifying the accounting issues raised by new digital transaction methods and, based on examples drawn from companies in the new economy, raises the issue of the increased accounting recognition of intangible assets. I then present a literature review on the contribution of intangibles to the value relevance of financial statements and their impact on the decisions made by users of financial information (e.g., financial analysts). The intangible assets examined are R&D, advertising expenses and patents, as well as the specific disclosures of identified intangible assets in the purchase price allocation process. Two main findings stand out: intangible assets appear to be firmly linked to companies’ stock market performance measures; but also not properly understood by financial statement users because of their low accounting recognition. Keywords: Intangible assets; Value relevance; R&D; Digital economy; Accounting (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22045_27 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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