School of Finance, Tongling University, Tongling, Anhui, China.
PLoS One. 2024 Aug 13;19(8):e0307946. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0307946. eCollection 2024.
Physical capital stock is the basic indicator of macroeconomic empirical studies and also an important manifestation of macroeconomic activity capacity. When measuring China's provincial physical capital stock by the perpetual inventory method, the treatment for the depreciation rate and the initial physical capital stock in the existing literature has some defects in reflecting the economic performance. The purpose of this paper is to build the most reliable and reasonable statistical series of China's provincial physical capital stock. We establish a measurement formula in form of the variable depreciation rate and improve the treatment for the depreciation rate and the initial physical capital stock. For the depreciation rate, we measure the benchmark depreciation rate of physical capital and determine the variable depreciation rate according to the economic growth rate, which makes the variable depreciation rate reflect the economic growth. For the initial physical capital stock, we measure the initial physical capital stock according to the capital output ratio, which makes the initial physical capital stock reflect the economic aggregate. Based on these improvements, we measure China's provincial physical capital stock from 1952 to 2022 by the perpetual inventory method. Through analyzing the measurement results, we have a more distinct insight into the temporal and spatial characteristics of China's provincial physical capital stock: The growth rate of physical capital stock at the provincial level has slowed in spite of remaining high; The eastern region is much higher than the central and western regions. According to these two characteristics, it is suggested that policymakers need to improve market mechanisms and adjust investment policies to promote a benign profile of economic growth and a regional optimization of capital formation.
物质资本存量是宏观经济实证研究的基本指标，也是宏观经济活动能力的重要体现。在用永续盘存法测算中国省级物质资本存量时，现有文献中对折旧率和初始物质资本存量的处理存在一些缺陷，无法反映经济表现。本文旨在构建最可靠、最合理的中国省级物质资本存量统计序列。我们建立了一个具有可变折旧率的计量公式，并改进了折旧率和初始物质资本存量的处理方法。对于折旧率，我们测量物质资本的基准折旧率，并根据经济增长率确定可变折旧率，使可变折旧率反映经济增长。对于初始物质资本存量，我们根据资本产出比来测量初始物质资本存量，使初始物质资本存量反映经济总量。基于这些改进，我们用永续盘存法测算 1952 年至 2022 年中国省级物质资本存量。通过分析测算结果，我们更清晰地洞察了中国省级物质资本存量的时空特征：省级物质资本存量的增长率虽然仍然很高，但已经放缓；东部地区远高于中部和西部地区。根据这两个特点，建议政策制定者需要完善市场机制，调整投资政策，以促进经济增长和资本形成的良性区域优化。
