Volume of capital services: annual estimates for 1950 to 2008 and new quarterly series

SummaryCapital services are the flow of services into the production of output that are generated by the capital stock, as opposed to the stock of capital itself. As such, capital services are the measure of capital input that is more suitable for analysing and modelling productivity (see Long and Franklin 2010 for new estimates of multi‐factor productivity). This article presents experimental capital services estimates for 1950 to 2008. New estimates for 2008 are presented in this article with earlier years updated to incorporate revisions throughout the time series. Revisions are caused primarily by balancing revisions to the constant price plant and machinery series and new data on computer hardware investment. In addition, this article presents for the first time an experimental quarterly series of capital services growth for the whole economy.