GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS: The productivity contribution of intangible assets and participation in global value chains (D2.2)

This deliverable studies the contribution to productivity of five types of intangibles (R&D, computer software, branding, design and organizational capital) and global value chain (GVC) participation. The analysis is conducted at industry level. GVC participation is analysed using network centrality measures calculated from the World Input-Output Database (WIOD), while intangible valuation is obtained from the Intan-Invest database.

Our unbalanced panel consists of 17 countries and 16 sectors observed for the period 2000–2014. Both GVCs and intangibles were found to be significant drivers of productivity. Moreover, our results revealed that intangibles have an impact via two channels: one direct and other indirect (via GVC mediation).

The main contribution of this study is that our results show not only the contribution of intangibles and GVC integration to productivity, but also the combined effect of the two. Intangibles are found to have a secondary effect, mediated by GVC, which can be as large as the direct effect in terms of magnitude.

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