SYNOPSIS: The value relevance of intangible assets is now well documented in the
literature, leading to calls for standard setters to adopt more flexible reporting rules for
these assets. In this study, I evaluate the merits of intangibles capitalization from a
bankruptcy and default risk perspective, which has not been previously considered in
the literature. The study is conducted in a unique reporting environment, where managers
have had considerable discretion to capitalize a wide range of intangibles over an
extended period. Three main results are reported. First, failing firms capitalize intangible
assets more aggressively than non-failed firms over the 16-year sample period,
but particularly over the five-year period leading up to firm failure. Second, drawing on
the accounting choice literature, I find that managers’ propensity to capitalize intangible
assets has a strong statistical association with earnings management proxies, particularly
among failing firms. Finally, voluntary capitalization of intangibles has strong discriminating
and predictive power in a firm failure model, even after controlling for several
other factors.
Keywords: intangibles; discretionary capitalization; firm failure; accounting choice.
Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources identified in the paper.
INTRODUCTION