Intangible Assets and National Income Accounting

Book excerpt: In this paper the author relates the measurement of intangibles to the project of measuring the sources of growth. He focuses on three related and difficult areas of the measurement of national income: the measurement of new goods, the deflation of intangible investment, and the divergence between the social and private valuations of intangible assets. The author argues that the economic theory and practice underlying measurement of these items is currently controversial and incomplete, and he points toward how concretely to move forward.