As the society gets transformed to the knowledge-based economy, the intangible assets are becoming the source of wealth. Accordingly the investment to them has been increased.
Yet there has been a discrepancy between firm’s value recognized in the...
As the society gets transformed to the knowledge-based economy, the intangible assets are becoming the source of wealth. Accordingly the investment to them has been increased.
Yet there has been a discrepancy between firm’s value recognized in the market and firm’s book value reported in the financial statements in general. One of the major reasons for this discrepancy is that the conservative accounting standards do not allow to fully reflect the value of intangible assets. So, there arise some criticisms that the usability of financial information and the relevance of accounting information have been declined.
Under these circumstances, BSC - which has appeared from the collision between the irresistible force to build long-range competitive capabilities and the object of the historical-cost financial accounting model, is pointing out the importance of the value of human capital. Since improved values in human-resource and development capital should be a leading indicator of improvement in customer capital and profitability, human capital’ role as a factor which causes a chain of cause and effect relationships must be fully assessed.
This paper focuses to reveal the relationship between the value of human capital that is important part of intangible assets and the firm values by using the labor-related cost and the education & training expenses. To examine how the human capital influence the firm values, this paper analyze the relationship between the Tobin`s q and the value of human capital indicated by the labor-related cost and the education & training expenses during 2000-2006 for KSE. Through multiple linear regression analyses, this paper shows that the human capital influences the firm values positively. The main effect of the labor-related cost and the education & training expenses is significantly positive in the firm values as expenses for acquiring and developing human capital. Also, the relationships between control variables (growth, market risk) and Tobin`s q are significantly positive. It represents that the increased the labor-related cost and the education & training expenses contribute the firm values.
This paper is meaningful because there exist few previous studies that have examined human capital as an intangible asset and the relationship between the labor-related cost and the education & training expenses and the firm values. Also, the key implication of this study is that it is a reminder that the values of human capital do important roles.