The paper describes the methodologies used in the financial accounts, statistics that the Bank of Italy published annually for the first time in 1965 and now issues quarterly. The financial accounts record the yearly stocks and flows of a country’s financial assets and liabilities, divided between the institutional sectors of the economy.
Chapter 1 describes in detail the composition of the institutional sectors. Chapter 2 looks at the financial instruments issued and held by each sector. Chapter 3 summarizes the principles of the European System of Accounts (ESA95), which has established the rules for compiling statistics. Chapter 4 describes the sources and estimation methods used to produce the statistics.
