Research Of China's Capital Measurement And Its Application

Capital is the key element of economic research.Economists usually focus on the aspect of production,while statisticians usually concentrate on the aspect of national accounting.The crucial role of capital in economic and statistics requires researchers to measure it more accurately.Due to the complexity of measuring capital,it is difficult for researchers to achieve a "perfect" measurement,which is worth pondering.Capital measurement originates from the demand of measuring national wealth and productivity,and it is a significant way to figure out a country's wealth level and production capacity.Capital measurement can be distinguished into capital stock measurement and capital services measurement.Capital stock can be divided into the net capital stock and productive capital stock,which reflecting the wealth side and production side of capital,respectively.The relationship between capital stock and capital services,the measurement and application of capital stock and capital service are the main issues of current researches.The Perpetual Inventory Method(PIM)and its derivative methods are the main methods of measuring capital.Goldsmith firstly applied PIM to measure the national wealth and the stock of fixed assets.Jorgenson has extended the theory of investment and capital measurement.Then,he proposed the method to aggregate the heterogeneous capitals.After that,SNA has improved the capital accounting and gradually generates a framework of capital stock and capital services measurement.According to the SNA framework,OECD has compiled and updated the manual of capital measurement.The U.S.,Australia,Canada,the European Union and several countries or international organizations have gradually incorporated the SNA framework into their accounting system.China's System of National Accounts(CSNA)has been enhanced the scope of fixed assets,but it has not totally absorbed the SNA capital framework.Therefore,it is difficult to analyze the international status of China's wealth stock or productivity without the official capital measurement.Moreover,the research of China's capital measurement is not only help to obtain China's real wealth level,to support the international comparison results,but also help to improve the statistical scope and statistical methods,so as to provide research experience for official capital measurement.At present,the main difficulties of capital measurement lie in the insufficient understanding of capital measurement,the lack of analysis of capital stock and capital services under a unified framework.To solve the above problems,this paper references the PIM,explores the feasibility of integrating capital services into CSNA and constructs multi-layers capital measurement approaches based on the statistical practice of China.These approaches emphasize the analysis of the capital stock and capital services within a unified framework.After that,the capital measurement results are applied to calculate the total factor productivity and capital services efficiency.Finally,the gaps between China and the U.S.are discussed.The specific research contents of this paper are as follows:The first chapter is the introduction.This part introduces the research background,research contents and technical route.The innovation,limitation and future development direction of this field is also given in this chapter.The second chapter is the literature review.This part summarizes the classical literatures and extracts the main issues of capital measurement.It mainly focuses on the technical issues of development process,investment sequence,price index,the initial capital stock,depreciation and aggregation of capital.The application researches from experts and institutions are also evaluated.Chapter three is the theory and method of capital measurement.This part summarizes the conceptual bases of capital measurement.The neoclassical investment theory and the asset value theory is the basis of measuring capital.Also,the index theory is the basis of heterogeneous capital services.This part focuses on the classic method of capital measurement.Measurement profile and retirement profiles can be derived from the PIM.The relationship and difference between depreciation mode and retirement mode can be compared by numerical cases.The total capital stock,net capital stock and productive capital stock can be derived from the combination of the profiles.This paper will adopt geometric and hyperbolic depreciation mode,normal bell-shaped retirement mode.After that,the endogenous ex-post method is applied to calculate the rate of capital return.The capital service index is presented in the form of Tornqvist index.The fourth chapter is the construction of China's capital measurement approaches.The revision of the assets scope and the absorption of capital services in SNA have significantly affected the capital statistics in various countries.This chapter analyzes the improvements of asset definition,asset scope and capital measurement in SNA and CSNA.Then,it discusses the feasibility and relevant suggestions of the integration of capital services and CSNA.The capital measurement framework in SNA is one of the basic frameworks of current capital measurement research.Therefore,this part references the experience of SNA framework to propose the multi-layers capital measurement approaches with the measurement of wealth capital and productive capital.These approaches provide a unified framework for the analysis and comparison of net capital stock,productive capital stock and capital services.The measurement approaches covers the total amount,provincial and industrial enterprises,and includes the measurement of information technology capital and research and development capital.Chapter five is the measurement of capital stock and capital services.This paper measures five kinds of capital in the total amount,provincial and industrial enterprises.It basically covers the key points of capital measurement.On the basis of the productive capital stock,rate of capital return user cost,capital services value and capital services are obtained.This part also adopts the PIM formula to calculate the traditional "net capital stock".Compares with the real net capital stock and the productive capital stock,the direct application of PIM formula may overestimate the capital stock.After that,the sensibility of measurement results by using the different measurement profiles and different price indices are analyzed.It was found that both the measurement profiles and different price indices influenced the research results in different degrees.Chapter six is the two applications of capital services.Capital services is suitable indicators to analyze the economic development quality in the framework of multi inputs and multi outputs.This may supplement the shortage of single index.Capital services is adopted as an input index to calculate TFP.The differences in productivity measured by different capital inputs are also investigated.Then,this chapter puts forward the index of capital services efficiency(CSE),which is calculated by the ratio of the optimal input and actual input.The CSE index is based on the optimization of the production process,which can provide more information and suggestions on optimizing investment utilization and improving the production process.This chapter finds that China's TFP and CSE of all levels have not maintained a high level of growth.Chapter seven is the comparison of capital measurement and capital application between China and the U.S.This chapter evaluates the investment statistics in China and the U.S.to summarize the experience of advanced investment statistics.After comparing the calculation and application results of the two countries,it is found that the gap of capital stock mainly comes from special assets.The gap of TFP and CSE mainly lies in the insufficient utilization of assets and the large use of energy in China.The eighth chapter is the conclusion and future outlook.It summarizes the main research conclusions,then it presents several suggestions,such as:(1)the improvement of the capital statistics in the new economy era.(2)The construction of the Chinese capital statistics database.(3)The international comparison of capital measurement.The main innovations of this paper are summarized as follows:(1)This paper has constructs approaches of China's capital measurement with multi-layers.These approaches have covered as various research layers and the key points as possible.Various measurement aspects and asset types are decomposed into specific measurement approaches.This paper will provide references for China's statistical practice and other capital researches.(2)The net capital stock,productive capital stock and capital services are measured by a unified framework.Under the unified framework,the comparability between capital indicators is much stronger.The traditional method of calculating the net capital stock was abandoned in this paper.In addition,the age-price retirement profile is used to calculate the real net capital stock.Therefore,the gap between the age-efficiency profile and the age-price profile is observed.(3)This paper focus on the capital services measurement of industrial enterprises.The total economy and the provincial levels represent the macro perspective and the regional perspective,respectively.The measurement approach of the industrial enterprises is the supplement of the micro perspective.Industrial enterprises are the backbone of the Chinese national economy.Financial indicators and statistical indicators of industrial enterprises are representative and available.Measuring capital industrial enterprises may provide reference for other types of enterprises to calculate capital indices.(4)The index of capital services efficiency is proposed and the TFP is calculated.Thus,the application directions of capital services is supplemented in this paper.Referring from the concepts of economic efficiency,this paper constructs the capital services efficiency index.This paper tries to find the disadvantages of capital services efficiency and productivity.Thus,it tries to offer the suggestions of investment efficiency and economic development quality.(5)A comprehensive comparison of capital measurement between China and the U.S.is conducted.The international comparison is studied form the aspects of the investment statistics,capital measurement,TFP and CSE of the two countries.This paper also analyzes the current situation and causes of differences between China and the U.S.