We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 18461
March 2026
The Labor Demand Implications of Brand Capital: Evidence from Trademark Transactions
Jaime Arellano-Bover, Carolina Bussotti, Matteo Paradisi, Liangjie Wu

Brand capital--an intangible asset that differentiates a firm's products--has grown in recent decades, alongside the rise of intangible investment and the decline in the labor share. Trademarks are legal claims on brand capital and are traded across firms, providing a setting to study how reallocating brand capital reshapes firm behavior and aggregate outcomes. Leveraging a novel link of Italian administrative data on trademark ownership, firms' financial statements, and employer–employee records, we exploit firm-to-firm trademark transactions to identify the effects of brand-capital investment. Guided by a model in which firms combine production and expansionary with brand capital, we use an event-study design to estimate firm-level and aggregate effects. Acquiring a trademark increases intangible assets by 19%, sales by 8%, and employment by 6%, while leaving weekly earnings unchanged and reducing the firm-level labor share. Employment gains are concentrated among marketing and sales workers. Trademark transactions reallocate brand capital toward larger firms, raising combined buyer-seller sales. Calibrating the model, we find this reallocation generates a one percentage-point long-run decline in the aggregate labor share.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

About IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA Network (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)