Knowledge Based Capital and Economic Performance

Objectives

Over the last two decades the BBVA Foundation and Ivie have been conducting an extensive research program on Spanish economic growth. The regularly-updated databases on capital stock are the basis of this program, which continues offering extremely valuable information for carrying international comparative analysis of economic growth and productivity. The methodology has been adapted several times to statistical changes as well as to ongoing international lines of research like industry analysis, regional disaggregation, or the public/private nature of the capital stock.

It is with this background of measurement issues that this Seminar is organized, aiming at exchanging new ideas among participants actually carrying out complementary projects in this widening field of research. Hence, international exposure of the different data banks will improve their degree of homogeneity and therefore will make them much more useful for policy design, comparative analysis and evaluation.

The important role played by intangibles in economic performance has deserved a lot of attention since the seminal work of Corrado, Hulten and Sichel (CHS) in 2005. Most of the recent methodological work focused on measurements estimates made for the market sector. This is the case of the two projects funded by the European Commission (COINVEST and INNODRIVE) under the 7th Framework Program, a third one carried out by the Conference Board and a harmonization project made by the INTAN-INVEST research team. These projects generated estimates of business intangible investment and capital for much of Europe and the US.

INNODRIVE emphasized consistent, improved estimation of intangible investment across countries, while COINVEST encouraged in-depth research and country-specific approaches. The INTAN-INVEST pro-ject harmonizes the information provided by the previous initiatives. Compared to the INNODRIVE-COINVEST-TCB data, the harmonized estimates are both a methodological improvement and an update of existing time series of intangible gross fixed capital formation. The harmonized estimates cover the EU27 member countries and the US in 1995-2005.

In parallel, the OECD is also performing a very ambitious agenda on Knowledge Based Capital at the industry level, complemented with related programs on Innovation on the Public Sector and the research challenges posed by Big Data.

The Workshop will present the main results of the projects developed by the FBBVA-Ivie, INTAN-INVEST, TCB, and the OECD, their complementarities, the impacts on economic performance, as well as a discussion on the future research Agenda, including methodological aspects such as the importance of services lives in capital services estimates.

Programme

Welcome and opening session: 9:00-9:15

José Manuel Pastor, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Universitat de València

First session: 9:15–11:00

Chair: Javier Quesada, Universitat de València and Ivie

“Measuring Productivity in the Public Sector: A personal view”
Matilde Mas, Universitat de València and Ivie

“INTAN-INVEST - Internationally comparable macroestimates of investment in intangible assets; business sector results; data methods and growth accounting”
Jonathan Haskel, Imperial College Business School, London

“INTAN-INVEST - Internationally comparable macroestimates of investment in intangible assets: Towards industry estimates”
Cecilia Jona-Lasinio, LUISS and ISTAT

Coffee break: 11:00–11:.30

Second session: 11:30–13:30

Chair: Mary O’Mahony, NIESR

“Measuring Knowledge-Based Capital. Initial findings from WPIA work”
Mariagrazia Squicciarini, OECD/DSTI, Economic Analysis and Statistics (EAS)

“Findings from recent TCB work, applications to public intangibles, and some thoughts on the way ahead”
Desiree Van Welsum & Kirsten Jäger, The Conference Board Europe

“Thoughts on service lives of public intangible assets”
Bernd Görzig, DIW Berlin

Closing session: 13:30-13:45

Vicent Soler, Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Universitat de València

Coordinator

Matilde Mas, Universitat de València and Ivie

Participants

Bernd Görzig, DIW Berlin
Jonathan Haskel, Imperial College Business School, London
Kirsten Jäger, The Conference Board Europe
Cecilia Jona-Lasinio, LUISS and ISTAT
Matilde Mas, Universitat de València and Ivie
Mary O’Mahony, NIESR
Javier Quesada, Universitat de València and Ivie
Mariagrazia Squicciarini, OECD/DSTI, Economic Analysis and Statistics (EAS)
Desiree Van Welsum, The Conference Board Europe

Venue

Universitat de València. Facultat d’Economia
Sala de Juntas (primera planta)
Avenida de los Naranjos, s/n - 46022 Valencia