中国的投资数据有多准确? How Accurate is China＇s Investment Statistics？

本文试图在朱天和张军(2014)对中国家庭消费支出被官方数据低估的研究基础上进一步考察中国的投资数据质量。我们发现,中国支出法GDP中的资本形成总额虽然名义上是独立核算出来的,但最终公布的数字却与严格按官方核算方法计算出来的结果大相径庭,基本上可以看成是按生产-收入法核算出来的GDP总额减去最终消费和净出口总额后的余项。在这种情况下,由于居民消费支出被低估,资本形成(即投资支出)也就被等量地高估了。 This paper investigates the quality of China＇s investment data. We follow strictly the official method to estimate the annual gross capital formation expenditure from 2004 to 2012, and find that the resulting figures are significantly different from the official statistics. We conclude that the official capital formation figure is practically a residual item derived from subtracting the amount of estimated final consumption and net exports from the official GDP （based on the production cum income method）. As a result, the underestimation of of China＇s consumption expenditure has automatically been translated into the overestimation its investment expenditure.