In economics, capital services refer to a chain-type index of service flows derived from the stock of physical assets and software. These assets are coordination, equipment, software, structures, land, and inventories. Capital services are estimated as a capital-income weighted average of the growth rates of each asset. Capital services differ from capital stocks because short-lived assets such as equipment and software provide more services per unit of stock than long-lived assets such as land. Unlike capital goods, capital services are owned by the person or group of people providing them.
Capital services are widely used in growth accounting frameworks to measure the contribution of capital inputs to productivity. The OECD notes that capital services provide a more accurate measure of productive input than capital stock, because they reflect the flow of services generated by different types of assets rather than their replacement value. Short-lived assets such as machinery or software typically have higher service flows per unit of stock than long-lived assets such as structures and land.