Measuring Intangible Assets in an Emerging Market Economy : An Application to Brazil
This paper measures intangible investment in Brazil. It estimates that during 2000-2008, annual business spending on intangible assets or knowledge-based capital in Brazil averaged about 4 percent of gross domestic product. While this is significan...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/07/16530073/measuring-intangible-assets-emerging-market-economy-application-brazil http://hdl.handle.net/10986/11972 |
| Summary: | This paper measures intangible
investment in Brazil. It estimates that during 2000-2008,
annual business spending on intangible assets or
knowledge-based capital in Brazil averaged about 4 percent
of gross domestic product. While this is significantly lower
than comparable rates for the United States, Japan and the
United Kingdom, which hover around 11 percent, it is not too
far below estimates for other developed countries such as
Italy and Spain. Of the total expenditure on intangible
assets in 2006, about 23 percent was spent on computer
software and databases, 43 percent on innovative property
(predominantly research and development and new product
development in financial services), and 34 percent on
economic competencies (which comprises branding, employee
training and organization improvement). Brazil's share
of spending on economic competencies is markedly lower than
that observed in the United States and the United Kingdom,
and the analysis finds it to be the slowest growing of the
major intangible categories. Finally, having extended the
intangible investment estimation methodology to produce more
disaggregated (industry-level) estimates, the authors show
that intangible investment is positively correlated with
recent export growth and total factor productivity estimates
across manufacturing industries. This suggests that
intangible or knowledge-based capital, as measured here, can
account for part of the hitherto unexplained component of
productivity growth. |
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