Millionaires and Intellectual Capital: An Empirical Study

P. 436–444.

Naidenova I. N., Zavertiaeva M. A., Tomé E.

In this paper we present an application of the model of Intellectual Capital to the world of the very rich and millionaires. It Is, we believe an important research topic, because in the last decade inequality grew, and Intellectual Capital became the most important economic asset. But no empirical studies exist to link the two phenomena. We applied our model to a set of football coaches, football being an industry that produces outlying incomes. We estimated the relation between a set of intellectual capital characteristics of those coaches and their incomes. We found that indeed, IC explains almost two thirds (63%) of the evolution of the very big salaries of those very rich people. Even if those results are interesting, and give an indication of the influence of IC in the success of rich people, they are only limited to a small sample of persons. Anyway, from our research we may infer that IC (social capital, human capital, and structural capital) plays a major role in defining the wealth of the top earners in the world. From this we may conclude that a policy of inequality reduction should take into account that intangible assets are at the base of those persons wealth. The study is original, because at least for our knowledge, It is the first in which the relation between IC and the wealth of millionaires has been tested. We hope to enlarge the study in the future in order to include the phenomenon of billionaires, as well.

Keywords: интеллектуальный капитал, intellectual capital, Empirical study, влияние, эмпирическое исследование, impact, millionaires, миллионеры

In book

Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Intellectual Capital

Reading: Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited, 2013.