The investments in tangible assets are treated as assets in accounting due to their stable future benefit on firm performance. However, investments in intangibles such as salary, research and development, and advertising are still being recognized as expenses due to their unclear effect on firm performance. The decision makers can hardly obtain effective information from those investments in intangibles. Although many researchers discuss the relationship between investments in intangibles and firm performance, yet the conclusion is still not concurred. This study employs nonparametric regression techniques to find the functional form of investment in intangibles and firm performance. The result reveals that (1) nonparametric model is suitable to describe the functional form of the investments in intangibles (2) investments in intangibles have deferred effect on firm performance (3) investments in intangibles of high-tech industries have more significant effects on firm performance than investments in intangibles of traditional industries.
Relation:
2005年管理科學與經營決策國際學術研討會論文集=Proceedings of the 2005 International Conference in Management Sciences and Decision Making,頁375-390