GLOBALINTO policy brief – Policies for Enhancing Growth from Intangibles at the Aggregate and Sectoral Levels

Policy brief on intangibles at the sectoral and aggregate levels

This Policy Brief offers a new perspective on the role played by intangibles at the sectoral level and corroborates the significance of intangibles for productivity in knowledge-based EU economies today. The policy brief reaches the following policy implications and recommendations:

• First, the importance of economic competences as a driver of labour productivity growth at the aggregate and sectoral levels necessitates the integration of this group of intangibles to the national accounts.
• Second, while R&D is highly important for manufacturing, it is less important for the services sector where a different set of intangibles (software, vocational training, and organizational capital) more strongly shapes productivity. Greater acknowledgement of this fact could open new avenues for policy discussions following the Europe 2020 strategy.
• Third, future research should explore the factors that affect investments in organizational capital and how differences in organizational capital across countries translate into differences in productivity growth. Future policies in the EU should concentrate on improving organizational capital in the market services sector.
• Fourth, government policies that actively support the accumulation of business intangibles should be designed and implemented in a decisive manner. This will foremost require government investment in public intangibles, well-functioning formal and informal institutions and a well-designed policy framework.
• Finally, this policy brief suggests a set of industrial and innovation policy implications and recommendations at the national and the EU levels such as a redirection of policy support to the growth of knowledge-intensive firms and the importance of taking different contextual elements into account.

See the policy brief here.