Capturing the value of intangible assets in micro data to promote the EU's growth and competitiveness

ended

GLOBALINTO will provide new measures of intangible assets at the firm level, filling an important gap in measurement which has restricted statistical production, micro-based analysis and evidence-based policymaking. GLOBALINTO will analyse the various potential explanations of the productivity puzzle, both at micro and macro levels. Our work will bring further the earlier work by the EU FP7 Innodrive project to create refined and validated intangible capital data and indicators that can be implemented in official statistics production. Importantly, this also includes the development of measures of public sector intangibles and their impact on innovation and productivity. The analyses in GLOBALINTO are novel, focusing not only on firm behaviour at the micro level but by also being able to observe the common growth characteristics in industries and the role of intangibles for changes in market structure. Broader measurement of intangibles (in particular non-R&D) at the firm level helps to identify new sources of growth to reverse the trend of lower intangible capital deepening after financial crises in 2008. Knowledge on human and intangible capital at the firm-level also helps to promote new intangible capital formation under the ageing population. Such a micro data approach is by definition necessary also in the effort to understand the role of small firms as engines of growth and hindrances for market entry. The analysis also aims to show the global structure and fragmentation of value chains, and their role in innovation, knowledge diffusion and the exploitation of new knowledge. On the basis of empirical results and theoretical advances, GLOBALINTO will also explore and further the role of policy for the mobilisation of intangibles. The ambition of GLOBALINTO is not only to assess productivity potential but to decompose its explanatory factors in a way that offer tools for policies to foster innovation and future growth.