Fully expensing intangible investments has potential distorting effects on factor investing based on book-to-market, investment, and profitability. Incorporating intangible investment/capital into the conceptual frameworks and empirical factor models of Fama and French (1993, 2015) and Hou, Xue...

Expenditures on creation of intangible capital have increased but accounting standards have not kept pace. We investigate whether this has affected the value relevance of book value and earnings. We construct a composite measure of intangible intensity based on intangible assets capitalized on...

The document sets out how intangible assets can be relevant for SMEs to obtain external funding; the challenges and opportunities in this area; and the rationale for policy intervention. It provides some policy trends from a selected group of countries and concludes with some issues to be...

Using information on class action lawsuits in the period 1996-2016 covering 1,249 cases and 888 individual firms, I analyze the determinants of allegations and economic outcomes. Firms are more likely to be indicted if they are smaller, have a high level of investment, and have a bad stock...

A substantial and increasing proportion of corporate assets consists of intangible assets. Despite their growing importance, internally-generated intangible assets, the dominant type, are largely absent from balance sheets and other corporate reports. Consequently, the empirical capital...

Firms finance intangible investment through employee compensation contracts. In a dynamic model in which intangible capital is embodied in a firm's employees, we analyze the firm's optimal decisions of intangible investment, employee compensation contracts, and financial leverage. Employee...

We propose a new framework modelling intangible capital creation as the joint investment of firm resources and skilled human capital. High-intangible firms require less ex-ante cash spending yet must offer more deferred compensation to retain employees, creating unhedgeable risk. A human capital...

We find that acquisitions exhibit less evidence of agency problems when the target possesses more intangible assets. Acquisitions of intangibles are associated with higher announcement returns, superior post-acquisition performance, and less free cash flow, mitigating empire-building concerns....

I argue that intangible assets promote agency conflicts between outside investors and inside specialists. Their opacity and specialized nature provide a microfoundation for why highly intangible firms underinvest despite great valuations and profitability---a challenge for standard theories....

We investigate which firm characteristics are associated with investment in tangible and intangible fixed assets, paying special attention to the case of R&D, and which funding sources are used for each type of investment. Regarding firm characteristics, we find that younger and more profitable...