Capital formation

Capital formation is a concept used in macroeconomics, national accounts and financial economics. Occasionally it is also used in corporate accounts. It can be defined in three ways:

In the national accounts (e.g., in the United Nations System of National Accounts and the European System of Accounts) gross capital formation is the total value of the gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), plus net changes in inventories, plus net acquisitions less disposals of valuables for a unit or sector.

"Total capital formation" in national accounting equals net fixed capital investment, plus the increase in the value of inventories held, plus (net) lending to foreign countries, during an accounting period (a year or a quarter). Capital is said to be "formed" when savings are utilized for investment purposes, often investment in production.

In the USA, statistical measures for capital formation were pioneered by Simon Kuznets in the 1930s and 1940s, and from the 1950s onwards the standard accounting system devised under the auspices of the United Nations to measure capital flows was adopted officially by the governments of most countries. International bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have been influential in revising the system.

The use of the term "capital formation" and "investment" can be somewhat confusing, partly because the concept of capital itself can be understood in different ways.

Capital formation measures were originally designed to provide a picture of investment and growth of the "real economy" in which goods and services are produced using tangible capital assets. However, the international growth of the financial sector has created many structural changes in the way that business investments occur, and in the way capital finance is really organized. This not only affects the definition of the measures, but also how economists interpret capital formation. The most recent alterations in national accounts standards mean that capital measures and many other measures are no longer fully comparable with the data of the past, except where the old data series have been revised to align them with the new concepts and definitions.

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