How to value equity in national accounts?

Abstract

The objective of national accounts is to present a model of the real economy in the most accurate way. It means that not only officially recorded data from business accounting are included, but also model computations are used (e.g. in estimating the size of the shadow economy or correcting a phenomenon that may be biased in data sources). This is the reason why there sometimes exist vast differences between national accounts and business accounts. One of those most challenging fields is financial item AF.51, equity, whose valuation is considered differently in national and business accounts. Moreover, equity has close relationship with net worth of enterprises and this topic has recently been broadly discussed among national compilers. The aim of this paper is to show and compare possible methods of equity valuation and to emphasize its relationship to revaluation of non-financial assets made in national accounts under the ESA 2010 manual. The paper highlights the worldwide initiative of the Czech Statistical Office in the field of equity valuation that results in the proposal of a new methodology of equity valuation, with an effort to stir up a debate about this topic. It also makes a comparison of preliminary results in order to demonstrate potential changes in recognizing equity in national accounts.