III. FLOWS, STOCKS AND ACCOUNTING RULES
D. Stocks
1. Stocks
| 3.66. | Stocks are a position in, or holdings of, assets and liabilities at a point in time. The System records stocks in accounts, usually referred to as balance sheets, and tables at the beginning and end of the accounting period. However, stocks are connected with flows: they result from the accumulation of prior transactions and other flows, and they are changed by transactions and other flows in the period. They result in fact from a continuum of entries and withdrawals, with some changes, in volume or in value, occurring during the time a given asset or liability is held. |
| 3.67. | Values are recorded for non-financial assets, both produced and non-produced, and for financial assets and liabilities. The coverage of assets is limited to those assets used in economic activity and that are subject to ownership rights; thus for example, consumer durables and human capital, and also natural resources that are not owned, are excluded. |
2. Balancing items in the balance sheets
| 3.68. | Net worth, which is defined as the value of all the non-financial and financial assets owned by an institutional unit or sector less the value of all its outstanding liabilities, is the balancing item in the balance sheets. As is true for other balancing items in the System, net worth cannot be measured independently of the other entries, and it does not relate to any specific set of transactions. |
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