Both can be capital assets, according to Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake. An airliner is tangible capital, a song intangible. The two British authors argue that the growing importance of intangible capital requires us to change the way we think about business in postindustrial economies. Intangible capital, as defined by the authors, is not new. One could argue that the Phoenician alphabet, invented three millennia ago, was software, the capital base for the spread of knowledge throughout...

Source: Wall Street Journal January 28, 2018 21:33 UTC