- The Fed’s New Balance Sheet Calculations A Critique of Land Value Statistics The most comprehensive official statistics on nationwide real estate values are those published by the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) in its annual “Balance Sheets of the American Economy.” As part of its Z.1 statistical release the FRB compiles annual balance sheets of seven sectors which, taken together, make up the U.S. economy. These are the B-series tables near the end of the quarterly flow of funds reports. (The “B” stands for “Balance sheets.”) The Fed’s purpose of compiling these balance sheets is to track changes in the net worth of seven sectors: households, non-profit institutions, farms, non-financial non-corporate business, non-financial corporate business, and financial institutions. These estimates include the market value of real estate, as well as other assets, while ...

The Illusion that Makes Land Values Look Negative - How Land-Value Gains are Mis-attributed to Capital Dr Hudson is President of the Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends, New York. He has specialised in national income accounting, the balance of payments and flow of funds analysis for leading Wall Street finance houses. A former economics professor at the New School’s Graduate Faculty, he is the author or editor of over ten books on these topics, economic history and the history of economic thought. Land prices are rising in nearly every economy. This worldwide rise reflects primarily the lending of excess savings to mortgage borrowers. The upshot has been that rising land prices find their counterpart in a mushrooming real estate debt. This results in a rising share the land’s rental revenue ...