An Era of Intangible Assets

This work intent to discuss the contributions, productivity and economic growth, and challenges of intellectual assets. Intellectual assets do not have a real physical presence. They are resources used or employed to add a value to the business entity. Likewise tangible assets and intangible assets are also provide future benefit and play a significant role for success of the business. Due to information asymmetry, the traditional growth accounting has given a remarkable attention to tangible asset to measure the performance and economic growth. However, following an impressive increase in investment of intellectual assets, interest over financial information is growing and remarkable attempts have been made to identify and measure the contribution of intellectual assets. This work summarizes the growth of investment in intellectual assets in service and manufacturing sectors in selected countries. Most of the techniques used to classify and measure intangible assets are controversial. Despite the inexistence of common framework to measure and report, they have notable impact on financial reporting and governance of the company. For example, Alves and Martins (2014) use a cross-sectional data to examine the impact of the level and the type of the intangible assets on six major financial and governance policies. Similarly, Lev (1996), Smith and Parr (2000), Sullivan (2000), Zambon (2003-2004) have also discussed issues like measuring, reporting, and importance of intangible assets.