The role of industry factors and intangible assets in company performance in Colombia

We analyze the role of industry-related factors in the performance of Colombian firms between 1995 and 2012. Using hierarchical linear models for variance decomposition, we find that the role of industry-related factors varies considerably when different measures of firm performance are analyzed and that it is smaller than the share of total variance explained by firm-specific factors. The estimations also allow exploring the role of intangible assets in profitability, revealing that intangible assets play a prominent role among the firm-specific drivers of performance. The evidence confirms the resilience of intangible assets as drivers of competitive advantage in an emerging environment.