I.T. investment and intangibles : evidence from banks

Abstract

This paper models the investment behaviour of a multi-asset firm with market power that accumulates valuable intangible assets to complement the IT capital. The investment model is estimated using data from Spanish banks on assets of different nature: material (branches, financial), immaterial (advertising and IT) and intangible (training of workers). The paper estimates that the representative bank spends five additional Euros per Euro invested in IT-related assets in complementary intangible assets or, equivalently, intangibles amount to approximately 10% of the economic value of the representative bank. The remaining economic value is distributed between 28% from rents attributed to market power, and 62% to the cost of market-purchased assets