Intellectual capital and business performances in Italian firms: an empirical investigation

In this article, we show that eciency gains related to the intellectualcapital (IC) can raise the performances of the rm more than eciencygains related to physical/nancial capital (CE.) Furthermore, we showthat this can be the case not only for knowledge-intensive rms but alsofor capital-intensive rms. Adopting a variant of Pulic's (2000) value-added intellectual coecient (VAIC) we analyzed a sample of 787 Italianrms operating in service-related industries and manufacturing-relatedindustries over the period 2000-2010. We found that IC-related eciencygains of 1 per cent can raise the returns on assets (ROA) up to 0.7 percent and the cash-ows to operational revenues (CF) up to 21.1 per cent.Finally, we estimated that CE-related eciency gains produce negligibleeects. These results are consistent across industries and fade away within2 years.