Intangibles in Light of Industry-level CompNet Dataset

Aleksi Pikka

No 119, ETLA Working Papers from The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy

Abstract: Abstract This paper studies the productivity effects of intangible assets using 9th vintage of the CompNet dataset. Descriptive work shows that there is dispersion in usage of intangibles; some firms invest heavily into intangible assets and many firms do not invest at all. In addition, preliminary evidence, using the joint distributions provided by CompNet, implies that intangible assets increase the productivity of the firms that already belong to the 90th productivity percentile. Furthermore, I estimate the output elasticity of intangible assets by a Cobb Douglas production function using data at the 2-digit industry (NACE rev 2) level of aggregation and find output elasticity of intangibles to be approximately between 0.08–0.10. A special emphasis is placed on development of intangibles in Finland. I find that concentration in intangibles, measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, has increased in the past few years and that intangible assets are concentrated in ICT and manufacturing macro-sectors. In addition, I estimate a Cobb Douglas production function using only data from Finland and find that while output elasticity on intangible assets is approximately 0.05, the coefficient is not statistically significant, and hence, the evidence is inconclusive.

Keywords: Intangible capital; Productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E22 J24 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2024-09-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-eff and nep-ict
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.etla.fi/wp-content/uploads/ETLA-Working-Papers-119.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:rif:wpaper:119

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://www.etla.fi/ ... vel-compnet-dataset/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ETLA Working Papers from The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kaija Hyvönen-Rajecki ().