Disaggregated capital stock estimation for Austria - methods, concepts and results

Abstract

Based on a survey of the appropriate literature and on separate investigations concerning distributions of asset lives and depreciation patterns of vehicles, gross and net capital stocks as well as depreciation at constant prices and at replacement cost have been estimated for Austria using the Perpetual Inventory Method. The problem of the limited length of investment time series has tried to be overcome by assigning a fixed age to each initial stock. The level of disaggregation for the calculations is ÖNACE 2-digit2 and this has been further broken down to the categories buildings, machinery and equipment, and vehicles. All available a priori knowledge and data have been incorporated. All estimates of capital stocks and depreciation based on industry level investment data are subject to uncertainty due to the lack of information at the asset type level. In order to give a quantitative assessment of this uncertainty, for the public as well as for the private enterprise sector, several scenarios have been calculated. In addition a thorough sensitivity analysis with respect to all relevant parameters including the age assigned to the initial stock has been performed.