Publisher:
National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Mass
We decompose the difference between a firm's market value and book value into two components: reproducible intangible assets that can be created by competing firms through SG&A/R&D expenditures, and the residual denoted as franchise value which...
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ZBW - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft, Standort Kiel
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We decompose the difference between a firm's market value and book value into two components: reproducible intangible assets that can be created by competing firms through SG&A/R&D expenditures, and the residual denoted as franchise value which includes the value of transient-rents from capacity-adjustment-costs (Tobin's Q), longer-lasting franchise rents, and potential market-price intrinsic-value differences. We estimate the parameters of the model for building reproducible intangible capital using 176,005 firm-years of data for nonfinancial firms that are in COMPUSTAT and CRSP databases during the period 1976-2020. The estimated depreciation rates for intangible assets created by capitalizing R&D and SG&A expenditures respectively, and the portion of SG&A that contributes to organizational capital, while consistent with the parameters used in the empirical literature, vary significantly across industries. Ceteris paribus, firms with higher franchise values face fewer product market threats and have higher markups, whereas firms with higher reproducible intangible assets face higher threats. Higher franchise value reduces the sensitivity of a firm's investments with respect to total Tobin Q. Firms facing fewer product market threats, a measure of competitive advantage, experienced a larger increase in their franchise values due to increased globalization following China's entry into WTO in 2002 which is consistent with theory
