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

In this article, we show that efficiency gains related to the intellectual capital (IC) can raise the performances of the firm more than efficiency gains related to physical/financial capital (CE.) Furthermore, we show that this can be the case not only for knowledge‐intensive firms but also for capital‐intensive firms. Adopting a variant of Pulic's (2000) value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) we analysed a sample of 787 Italian firms operating in service‐related industries and manufacturing‐related industries over the period 2000‐2010. We found that IC‐related efficiency gains of 1% can raise the returns on assets (ROA) up to 0.7% and the cash‐flows to operational revenues (CF) up to 21.1%. Finally, we estimated that CE‐related efficiency gains produce negligible effects. These results are consistent across industries and fade away within two years.