It is the epitome of the modern company: short on physical capital but long on brainpower.
Growth in knowledge-based industries requires investment in knowledge as well as in physical capital.
In the new world, physical capital is a costly overhead, not a protection.
First, one of the largest categories of physical capital is real estate, and we have already overinvested in that area.
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As knowledge and intellectual property become more important than physical capital, businesses feel compelled to protect that intellectual capital by taking extraordinary steps.
If physical capital costs less to acquire than its true worth, companies should be buying it as fast as they can.
Now more than ever, intangible capital (such as intellectual property and brands) rather than physical capital separates the winners from the rest.
But that consistently short-termist, confused approach to investment - in our physical capital and in our people - is holding us back.
Avoiding special incentives for physical capital or improving property rights and the pricing of natural resources can generate resources for redressing social under-investment.
Our estimate of the benefits of lower capital taxes is conservative, as we consider only the impact of lower capital taxes on the accumulation of physical capital.
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It is not just investment in physical capital that matters.
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The rapid growth in output could be fully explained by rapid growth in inputs: expansion of employment, increases in education levels, and, above all, massive investment in physical capital.
When consumers put more of their money in their savings accounts, the funds would be lent out to finance the production of factories, machines, computers and other forms of physical capital.
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His view on tax reform is heretical as well: he decries tax breaks for investment in physical capital, declaring that taxes on families should be cut instead, since families create human capital.
Many products and services are created along supply chains that travel from idea conception to final consumption and that include value-added activities of varying degrees of labor-, physical capital-, and intellectual capital-intensity.
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Meanwhile, physical capital continues to be heavily subsidised.
Before this week's meeting with the government, Allianz, less tied to physical capital, had been threatening to reduce its tax base in Germany by moving some international business divisions abroad, again draining jobs from Germany.
With apologies to the less wonkish, China is using physical capital as a loss leader in order to grow cities that will produce network effects will in turn foster the human capital that really makes a country rich.
And yet--if only to insure against catastrophic global climate change that could irreversibly damage the world's human, natural and physical capital--an effective global agreement on mitigation must be achieved and put into force by the time the Kyoto Protocol's implementation period ends in 2012.
That's at first glance a visible positive, but since at least two of the Big Three are already on taxpayer life support, won't our economy suffer over the long term due to the waste of human, financial and physical capital on economic activity that private investors will no longer fund?
If I want to expand an existing business by buying additional physical locations, this capital outlay cannot be expensed either.
Governments are now competing with each other to attract the financial, physical, and human capital necessary to nourish high value-added, innovation-driven, 21st century economies.
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They are quite content to have their capital embodied in physical goods destined for future sale, in shares in industrial undertakings, in real estate which brings in rentals, or in loans to active men engaged in industry and commerce.
Lacking physical stores, it has lower operating and capital costs than rivals.
To re-value the indicators of use of GDP at constant prices, relevant price indices (consumer price index, capital investments price index, etc.) and physical indicators were applied.
In the fledgling capital, Canberra, he founded the Research School of Physical Sciences at the new Australian National University and helped to establish the Australian Academy of Science.
In the case of education, for example, a teachers' wages would come under current expenditure, while building a new school - a physical asset which will last a long time - would be classed as capital.
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Just as free trade in terms of physical and intellectual goods makes us better off, so are we better off when human capital can freely cross our borders such that we can all become even more specialized in our work.
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Physical sales for silver are strong and are offering a bit of a floor, but analysts at Barclays Capital said any upward momentum is difficult for the metal.
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