This thesis investigates the role of intangible capital and intangible investment (the intangibles) in explaining modern economic activity. It presents an in depth analysis of the context in which the intangibles are studied in the economic literature, and modifies existing theoretical real business cycle (RBC) models to account for the presence of the intangibles. The newly developed models are further used to address previously documented issues such as the Canadian productivity puzzle and the quantity anomaly.
Chapter 1 provides a detailed explanation of the concept of the intangibles in the economic literature. It also highlights the importance of accounting for the intangibles during economic analysis and presents a detailed analysis of how they are measured and modeled in practice. The main findings indicate that the intangibles have contributed positively to economic growth and productivity. The need for improvements in the measurement and modeling of the intangibles is also identified. Specifically, there is a need to improve the estimates of the depreciation rates and price deflators that are used in the measurement of intangible assets; and a need for proper model specification testing to validate the inclusion of the intangibles when modeling economic activity.
Chapter 2 explores the role of the intangibles in explaining business cycles in a small open economy. The benchmark two-sector model developed in this chapter is tailored to the Canadian economy and allows for the examination of the relationship between intangible investment and the trade balance, which has not been attempted to date in the RBC literature. Overall, this chapter finds that technological change in the production of intangible investment plays an important role in explaining labour productivity and business cycles in a small open economy. Simulations based on the benchmark two-sector model highlight the circumstances under which the trade balance to business sector output ratio tends to be procyclical. The extended model is further used to make predictions about the Canadian productivity puzzle, where the main findings reinforce the need to re-evaluate the traditional measure of productivity in business cycle models.
Chapter 3 is motivated by the rising levels of intangible investment in the U.S. and Europe. These investments have been expensed in the national accounts rather than capitalized (unmeasured investment) and this practice has resulted in the traditional measures of investment, productivity and output underestimating their true levels. In order to investigate the economic impact of this practice in an international setting, the standard two-country business cycle model is extended to include such intangibles. The main results imply that the traditional measures of output and labour productivity differences across countries are understated when intangible investment is not properly accounted for. The modeling of intangible investment also improves the fit of the model based upon recent data on international business cycles. This is most evident in the international correlation of investment, which the standard model predicts to be low (0.13) and the extended model correctly predicts to be high (0.66) as seen in the data (0.74). / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/20440 |
| Date | 17 November 2016 |
| Creators | Olagunju, Waheed |
| Contributors | Letendre, Marc-Andre, Economics |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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