Intangibles: what put the new in the new economy?

Generating new products requires corporations to spend very large sums of money. These expenditures often lead to the development of intangible assets, such as patents and copyrights, that can add considerably to a company's coffers and stock market value. However, in general, our accounting conventions do not recognize these expenditures as investments--a holdover from the days when these types of investments were a negligible portion of total investment. Leonard Nakamura argues that these conventions cause profits and savings to be understated and that correcting them makes U.S. economic and financial performance more comprehensible