Accounting and Value Relevance of Intangibles: A longitudinal Study in Italian Stock Exchange 2010-2018

Abstract

 This paper aims at exploring whether single items of intangible recognized in the financial statements under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are value relevant to investors on the Italian Stock Exchange. The data were gathered from all non-financial Italian listed companies covering the period 2010-2018. Using the Ohlson’s (1995) model, a panel data regression analysis with fixed effect has been adopted to test the relationship between intangibles and stock prices. We found that intangibles (goodwill, R & D expenditure, and other intangibles that are the sub-categories displayed on Orbis Database) are positively related to security price. The implications involve managers that must give much interest to intangibles as well as standards setters that should require further disclosure. This work covered a very recent set of longitudinal accounting data and offered an updating view of the association between intangible information and value relevance in the Italian Stock