Incentive Distortion in Intangibles' Investment in Public Companies

The paper recovers the problem of the incentive distortion existence in the context of intangibles investment. The hypothesis tested in the course of the research is the appearance of managers’ incentives distortion towards value gaining in short-term period due to the available agency problem. Besides, the hypothesis is accompanied by the proposition that the mix of intangibles, namely, the type and amount, is also influenced by the agency problem. The verification is held on the data of European companies in 2004-2015 with the use of Structural Equation Modelling with interaction effects. The proposition is tested through the t-test for significance determination. The results suggest that the distortion does occur since the interaction term influences the performance indicators in a negative way when the agency problem exists. The insight is that the influence is relatively greater for long-term gains than for short-term ones. The proposition verification resulted in significant difference in means of initial intangibles inputs that, in turn, reveals the correctness of the proposed statement.