Intangible Assets and Productivity at the Firm Level: R&D versus non-R&D Intangibles

Felix Roth and Christian Rammer

No 20, Hamburg Discussion Papers in International Economics from University of Hamburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: Intangible assets have increasingly been identified as a main source of productivity gains. Since the pioneering work by Corrado, Hulten, and Sichel (2005), empirical research has largely focused on macro and industry-level studies, while firm-level studies have often been confined to a limited set of intangible assets, especially Research and Development (R&D). This paper employs a unique firm-level panel database that contains information on four types of intangible assets: R&D, software & databases (S&D), firm-specific human capital (HC), and brand value (BV). For R&D, we find much lower productivity returns than for S&D and HC. R&D even loses significance once controlling for other intangibles, except for high-tech manufacturing. In contrast to R&D, we find that S&D and HC tend to be the primary drivers of productivity gains, particularly in services. Our findings have implications for research policy, suggesting a stronger focus on supporting investment in non-R&D intangibles, including S&D and HC.

Keywords: Non-R&D intangibles; Productivity; R&D; Digitalisation; Firm-specific human capital; Brand value; Firm-level panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 E22 O33 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-eff, nep-ino, nep-sbm and nep-tid
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:uhhhdp:20

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