Do Intangible Investments Affect Companies’ Productivity Performance?

Using company accounts data for 5 countries (US, UK, Japan, France and Germany) we analyse the relationship between intangibles and productivity. We integrate the company data with industry information on tangible and intangible investments and skill composition of the labour force. The industry data are summarised in two different taxonomies, factor and skill intensive groups, obtained using cluster analysis. These are included in the econometric specification in the form of shift and interactive dummies. The results provide evidence of higher productivity in R&D intensive industries. This can be interpreted as evidence in favour of the presence of spillover effects.