TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Arellano-Bover, Jaime
AU  - Bussotti, Carolina
AU  - Paradisi, Matteo
AU  - Wu, Liangjie
        TI  - The Labor Demand Implications of Brand Capital: Evidence from Trademark Transactions
        PY  - 2026/Mar/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18461
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18461
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - brand capital
KW  - trademarks
KW  - labor share
KW  - labor demand
KW  - markups
        ER  -