Measuring Intangible Capital with Market Prices

The paper previously circulated under the title “Acquisition Prices and the Measurement of Intangible Capital.” Special thanks to Dimitris Papanikolaou and Luke Taylor. We thank Gordon Phillips for providing data for the SDC-Compustat merge and Shiyu Zhang for research assistance. Jan Bena (discussant), Nagpurnanand Prabhala (discussant), Hila Fogel-Yaari, Arthur Korteweg, Pierre Liang, Song Ma, Tom Ruchti and seminar participants at Columbia University, Cornell University (accounting and finance), University of Rochester, Michigan State University, University of Michigan, UT-Dallas, Southern Methodist University, Singapore Management University, National University of Singapore, HKUST, University of Hong Kong, CityU Hong Kong, University of Utah, Tulane University, Caltech, American Finance Association, Paris Financial Management conference, Washington University Conference on Corporate Finance, Midwest Finance Association, the Cass Mergers and Acquisitions Conference, and the Finance, Organizations and Market Conference (2018) provided helpful feedback. Code and data to incorporate the intangible capital measures can be found at: http://bit.ly/intan_cap. First version: September 2018. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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• June 12, 2019