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Capital Measurement

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The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

Abstract

Capital measures provide an indicator of wealth and of capital services, the contribution of assets to production. The wealth stock is the market value of assets, whereas capital services are measured in proportion to the quantity of past investment, adjusted for the relative efficiency of different vintages and capital goods in production. Although the two measures of capital are different, they are derived from a single theoretical framework whose centrepiece is a fundamental equilibrium relationship between stocks and flows of capital. Index number theory is used to guide the empirical implementation of stock and flow measures.

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Diewert, W.E., Schreyer, P. (2018). Capital Measurement. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2429

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