Estimating the capital stock for the NUTS 2 regions of the EU-27

Summary:

To identify and target lagging regions, policy-makers require statistics to be produced at regional level. In many instances it is not possible simply to compare regional-level statistics produced by Member State national statistical offices as there is variation in the methods and assumptions used to produce them. Capital stock statistics at the national level have been available for most countries of the EU-27 for some time, but statistics at the regional level are absent for almost all countries. Where they do exist the methods used to produce them are not consistent across countries.

This paper assesses the feasibility of producing comparable estimates of the capital stock at NUTS 2 regional level for the EU-27 and makes some initial estimates. The paper outlines the method and data employed, and the techniques used to fill missing values. The approach is a Perpetual Inventory Method based on that outlined in the OECD Manual (2001; 2009) on capital estimation, and the data employed were taken from Eurostat or other publicly available sources wherever possible. The paper analyses the robustness of the capital stock estimates produced, as well as their impact on productivity analysis, and suggests how they can be improved in future updates.

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