知识资本测度的前沿研究

A Survey of Frontier Research on Measurement of Knowledge-based Capital

在21世纪的经济生活中,知识资本成为经济发展的动力源泉。近年来,各国研究者围绕知识资本的测度开展了丰富的研究,并已取得显著成绩。Corrado、Hulten和Sichel提出的测度框架为后续研究提供了基础,同时,其遗留下来的问题构成进一步研究的关注点。近年来的研究主要沿着国家层面的知识资本投资测算、产业和企业层面的知识资本投资测算、为难以测度的知识资本设计测算方法以及提高资本化参数的精确性这四个方向推进。在进一步的研究中,主要的挑战或方向在于测度品牌价值、消费者购物行为数据库的价值,应对大数据技术对计算化信息价值测算带来的挑战,扩展基于任务的组织资本测度方法、专利质量测度方法、基于产出的价格平减指数测度方法的应用范围,以及在纳入知识资本的基础上重新建构经济增长理论模型。

As the new source of economic growth,knowledge-based capital(KBC)is very important to economy in 21 st century.It is helpful for both enterprises and governments to measure KBC appropriately.In recent years,measurement of KBC has attracted many scholars around the whole world,and some significant achievements have been made.A survey of these frontier studies will help people understand these advances comprehensively and provide a basis for further research.Corrado,Hulten and Sichel set the framework(hereafter referred to as CHS framework or CHS approach)for measuring KBC,which has been adopted basically by all researches after them.In the CHS framework,KBC is classified into three broad categories — computerized information,innovative property and economic competencies,each of which includes several subcategories.In addition,the framework provides methods of measuring each subcategories of KBC and evaluations of relevant parameters.Following the CHS framework,scholars have studied KBC investment of many main countries and made international comparisons.These studies provided nation-specific measuring approaches,parameter estimates and data.It's unanimously illustrated that KBC is not only R&D capital,and KBC investment is equivalently very important to economic growth.Some scholars have also measured KBC investment at industrial level by following CHS approach and developed three ways for the measurement of KBC investment at firm level.Although KBC investment at macro and sectoral level has been estimated,there are still difficulties or controversies on measuring some subcategories of KBC.Firstly,there are differences between Frascati Manual and SNA(2008)on statistics measures of R&D expenditure.OECD revealed five main problems in converting data collected in one approach into the other and provided possible solutions.And since measurement of R&D investments has shifted from focusing on R&D expenditures to focusing on R&D output,and further from focusing on patent numbers to emphasizing patent quality as well,an indicator system of patent quality was developed.In addition,it's necessary to estimate knowledge spillover for measuring R&D output and much work has been done,however,there are still many imperfections and difficulties in this field.Secondly,as an innovative property,design is poorly defined and measured.Although some questionnaire surveys have been made in this field and the recent questionnaire was somewhat improved,further improvement is still needed for measuring design accurately.The last difficulty is how to measure economic competencies.Different from the CHS framework in which only managerial activities constitute organizational capital,others proposed a task-based methodology which assumes that any employee is a part of the firm's organizational capital so long as he/she is necessary for completing tasks that are needed for its long-term functioning.Another theme of research is the evaluation of important parameters.As for the depreciation rates of R&D capital,no consensus has been reached and various estimates differ greatly.New research papers suggested that the renewal and withdrawal of patents be used for measuring their lives.In the case of deflator of R&D investment,traditional approach estimates it based completely on prices and income shares of inputs,i.e.,labor force and capital.Yet others denied it and proved an output-based approach to be more eligible.Although the depreciation rates of organizational capital had been evaluated in CHS framework,other scholars had different opinions and gave their own estimates,which appear to be more realistic and are lower than that in CHS framework.In the end,main challenges of future research include measuring the values of brand equity and database of clients'purchasing behavior,and dealing with the challenge of measuring computerized data caused by big data.In addition,it may become direction of future research to apply task-based methodology of organizational capital,measurement method of patent quality,output-based approach of R&D deflator more extensively.And constructing growth accounting models including KBC is expected to be an important theme.