>From the accountants' point of view, there is a very definite reason why it
>is not asinine to call the machines "investment" and the research
>"expense", and if you had ever had to deal with a winding up of an
>insolvent company, you wouldn't need to ask why. Because companies cannot,
>in general, own people, they cannot pretend that they own knowledge which
>is locked in those peoples' heads.
Daniel, if research is an expense from a company's pt of view--and do note that through threats of lawsuits, companies do lay claim to employees' brains if they venture off--is it still not an investment in so called human capital from what you call the whole-economy level? Isn't this a problem of externalities that economists like Paul Romer and Richard Nelson have been dealing with? Wouldn't know.
Yours, Rakesh