Measuring quarterly net fixed capital stock in the Czech Republic

Abstract

Balances of fixed capital are ordinary part of annual national accounts statistics in most developed countries. Although quarterly data are useful for many applications and its existence would be consistent with other quarterly indicators, quarterly fixed capital stock are not officially published. Even though there is no official rule for estimation of quarterly fixed capital stocks, several methods are currently available to estimate quarterly stocks of fixed capital. The objective of this paper is to estimate the quarterly net fixed capital stock in the Czech Republic at constant prices in industry classification (CZ-NACE rev. 2) compatible with official quarterly statistics of the indicators on national economy. For this estimation we distinguish three basic flows of fixed capital. Firstly, gross fixed capital formation is estimated on the basis of official quarterly statistics which is published only in structure by types of assets. Flow of other changes is mainly uniformly distributed. Only in case of catastrophes it was possible to allocate these changes into appropriate quarter. Secondly, net fixed capital stock and consumption of fixed capital are estimated simultaneously on the basis of the assumption of relation between the value of the stock and its depreciation.

Keywords

• perpetual inventory method
• net capital stock
• consumption of fixed capital
• national accounts
• quarterly estimates