On Apr 25, 2008, at 4:06 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
how does the NIPA count "moral depreciation"? (I don't mean the kind
that happens on the Upper Left Side of Manhattan.)
There's this great thing called Google - which in PEN-L land operates
largely without capital assets - that, if you enter "software
depreciation site:bea.gov" into its query box, returns this cite:
<http://www.bea.gov/scb/account_articles/national/0400niw1/maintext.htm>
Recognition of software as investment.--In the NIPA's, business and
government expenditures for software are now recognized as fixed
investment.7 The investment flows are now capitalized and included
in the net stocks of private and government fixed assets. Software
investment has three components--prepackaged software, custom
software, and own-account software. Prepackaged software has an
average service life of 3 years and is depreciated geometrically at
a rate of 0.55 per year; custom and own-account software have
average service lives of 5 years and are depreciated geometrically
at a rate of 0.33 per year. In tables 1 and 2, software is included
in all the components except private nonresidential structures and
residential. For 1996, the inclusion of software as a fixed asset
added about $174 billion to the net stock of private fixed assets
and about $56 billion to the net stock of government fixed assets.
Depreciation pattern for personal computers.--The method for
estimating the net stock of personal computers (PC's) has been
changed. The depreciation of PC's is now based on a California
study of fair-market values of personal property including PC's.8
The new estimates are based on a geometric pattern of depreciation
that by the fifth year, results in a residual value for a PC of
less than 10 percent of its original value. In the previously
published estimates, the depreciation pattern for PC's was based on
work by Stephen Oliner of the Federal Reserve Board that included a
general depreciation schedule for computers, but not for PC's.9
Reading PEN-L sometimes you'd think that the BEA and BLS are staffed
by a bunch of dolts.
Doug
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
