Intangibles From Intangible Capital Work: Their Valuation and Technological Change

ABSTRACT The paper explores the relationship between intangibles, technological change, and multifactor productivity (MFP) in four countries: Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Slovenia, between 2007 and 2019. An innovative approach using linked employer–employee data is employed to measure firm‐level intangible assets within the areas of research and development (R&D), organizational capital (OC), and information and communication technology (ICT). Building on this, we introduce an Intangible‐Biased Technological Change (IBTC) approach that measures the effective use and quality of R&D and organizational capital work. The results show that both intangibles and industry‐specific IBTC contribute to higher MFP in the Nordic countries. IBTC is associated with growing productivity disparities among firms within the same industry. Nevertheless, we also find that R&D enhances absorptive capacity, leading to positive spillovers in inter‐industry relationships, and that R&D‐IBTC can also narrow differences in productivity between various industries.