Ever wondered what type of assets are measured in national accounts?
This figure from the "Net Worth of Nations" post
medium.com/p/3d7a091b00f9
builds on the framework introduced in previous
#MacroCritical articles:
medium.com/macrocritical
Here we break down the full scope of non-financial and financial assets.
Here is a
#TLDR;
👉 While non-financial
#assets are typically associated with physical assets, these are only the first four categories (dwellings, buildings, machinery, weapon systems). There are quite a lot of other asset types as well including intellectual property, leases, licenses, and even
#crypto and
#AI (updated in
#SNA2025).
👉
#Nature also forms part of non-financial assets but only includes "measureable" parts nature in terms of economic contribution. Nature "assets" ecosystem services (not captured in the SNA) from the "natural capital" of nations. More on this later.
👉 There is another capital not directly captured in the SNA but is extremely import: "Human capital". We will also explore in detail in another post.
💰 Financial products are split into 8 categories and are carefully tracked in the SNA. There are: (1) Monetary Gold and SDRs, (2) Currency and Deposits, (3) Debt securities, (4) Loans, (5) Equity, (6) Insurance, Pensions, Other guarantees, (7) Financial derivatives, employee stock options, (8) Other accounts
💰 Each category comes with its own set of
#risks. Therefore, flows within these categories are also critical for measuring the financial health of countries.
👉 Not all changes in assets are due to investments or market-based transactions. Quite a lot of changes can also come through "Revaluations" or "Other Volume Changes", and can be quite large especially for traded financial instruments. These can also introduce "balance sheet risks", such as risks of
#strandedassets.
Read and explore the data for each of these in the guide. We will continue expanding this framework in subsequent posts till we have our foundations in place.
#MacroCritical #Medium #assets #networth #policyviz #dataviz