Extended Measures of Investment and Saving

National accountants treat as consumption all expenditure incurred in purchasing consumer durables and in forming intangible assets such as knowledge, education and good health. The case is made in this paper that the national accounts measures of saving and investment understate both the extent to which we save and the extent of the resources that we allocate to investment. Moreover, the national accounts data do not allow us to monitor substitution between tangible and intangible assets.