The Effect of Intellectual Capital on the Profitability Ratios in the Banking Industry : Evidence from Iran

As the world economy is moving from being an industrial economy to a knowledgebased one, identification, valuation and management of intellectual capital has become an important issue for many companies. The present paper studies the relationship between intellectual capital and its components (structural, physical and human) and the bank profitability ratios (return on assets, return on shareholders' equity, profit margin and net profit growth rate) in the Iranian banking industry by using two control variables, i.e., bank size and financial leverage. The results indicate that intellectual capital has a strong impact on banks' performance