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National accounts:

Balance sheet underestimated in economic analysis

Statistical news from Statistics Sweden 2010-01-22 9.30

The balance sheet is often neglected in macroeconomic analyses. This can be a reason why the strength and development of the financial crisis surprised so many. The report "Assets, debts and capital gains" shows the possibilities of analysing the development with an economy's balance sheet as the starting point.

The structural changes in the Swedish economy are analysed over a longer period in the report. This shows how the crisis at the start of the 1990s and the present financial crisis have affected balance sheets.

The 1990s crisis had pervasive effects on both the structure of assets and the rate of indebtedness for households as well as the public sector. Thus far, the financial crisis has affected the balance sheets of the finance sector, but also the non-financial corporations and households. Households' rates of indebtedness and leveraging have increased sharply during recent years while much of the effects on the public sector will not be evident for a few years in the future.

The analyses were mainly done by using existing statistics from sectors and financial accounts as well as financial market statistics. Besides analyses of how events develop, the report contains a number of conclusions and proposals regarding the desirable improvements to the statistics.

Aside from publishing the report at Statistics Sweden's website, there is also underlying material such as extensive time series that in some cases reach all the way back to 1950.

Publication

Feel free to use the facts from this statistical news but remember to state Source: Statistics Sweden.