| Abstract: |
Given the attention to intangible capital in studying industry dynamics and
aggregate investment trends in the last couple of decades, this paper provides
a descriptive analysis of Intellectual Property Products (IPP) as measured in
the National Accounts (NIPAs) by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), with
attention directed to their three components: R\&D, Software, and
Entertainment, literary and artistic originals (ELAO), as well as the
relationship among investment in IPP, equipment, and structures within some
key sectors in the economy. In particular, we show that for the 7 sectors
studied in this paper, there was and still is a lot of heterogeneity in the
types of IPP capital that sectors use to produce and deliver goods and
services. We also illustrate that this heterogeneity seems to be the
combination of different forces: First, the initial composition of the
production function in 1980 among structures, equipment, and IPP components is
quite persistent, and second, the different evolution of prices of these three
types of IPP capital has played an important role in the pace of investment
and transformation in these sectors. |