Analysis of the importance of intangible capital and knowledge for productivity measurement

One leading explanation for the recent slowdown in productivity growth both globally and in the EU is that firm-level investments into intangibles and knowledge creation slowed down. Quantifying the role of these inputs into production requires both new methodologies and new data sources. In this paper, we use a number of firm-level surveys on innovation, R&D, intangible investments and ICT capital linked to balance sheet data to demonstrate how these data sources can contribute to productivity measurement. keywords: intangible capital, knowledge capital, productivity, linked microdata, survey data, R&D, innovation, ICT capital JEL-codes: C81, C83, D24, O30