Bart van Ark seminar: Are Intangibles Running out of Steam?

While weak total factor productivity growth has undoubtedly played a large role in the productivity slowdown, newly released data from EUKLEMS-INTANProd suggest that slower investment contributed substantially to the slowdown as well. In this talk, The Productivity Institute’s Managing Director Bart van Ark looks at the trends in investment and capital growth of tangible and intangible assets, and the contributions to productivity at aggregate and industry level for EU regions, the UK and the US. He explores how different types of tangible and intangibles assets have contributed to the productivity slowdown or mitigated the worst effects.

The video of the seminar is now available to view on OECD Science, Technology and Innovation YouTube channel.

Bart’s presentation slides are also available to read as you watch.

For more information on intangibles and their relation to productivity, see Intangible Capital and Modern Economies by Carol Corrado et al. in the Journal of Economic Perspectives (2022) and the paper Accounting for the slowdown in UK innovation and productivity by Jonathan Haskel and Peter Goodridge, or listen to the Productivity Puzzles episode Restarting the Future: How Intangibles Can Fuel Productivity. A TPI working paper based on this talk will be available soon.