The fixed capital stock in use by the UK construction industry

The study of technological change and productivity in the construction industry requires the development of some measure of the fixed capital stock available to the industry. There are serious theoretical and methodological weaknesses in the traditional neo-classical approaches to valuation of the capital stock. This paper is intended to overcome some of those problems in so far as they affect the construction industry and to present a suitable method of measurement using readily available published statistics. The paper also considers a method of deriving the average age of the capital stock from the estimated value of capital so calculated. This will help to facilitate empirical checks on the assumptions used and will also provide another dimension of technical change.