Depreciation

In accountancy, depreciation refers to two aspects of the same concept:

A method of reallocating the cost of a tangible asset over its useful life span of it being in motion. Businesses depreciate long-term assets for both tax and accounting purposes. The former affects the balance sheet of a business or entity, and the latter affects the net income that they report. Generally the cost is allocated, as depreciation expense, among the periods in which the asset is expected to be used. This expense is recognized by businesses for financial reporting and tax purposes. Methods of computing depreciation, and the periods over which assets are depreciated, may vary between asset types within the same business and may vary for tax purposes. These may be specified by law or accounting standards, which may vary by country. There are several standard methods of computing depreciation expense, including fixed percentage, straight line, and declining balance methods. Depreciation expense generally begins when the asset is placed in service. For example, a depreciation expense of 100 per year for five years may be recognized for an asset costing 500.

Currency appreciation and depreciation

Currency depreciation is the loss of value of a country's currency with respect to one or more foreign reference currencies, typically in a floating exchange rate system. It is most often used for the unofficial increase of the exchange rate due to market forces, though sometimes it appears interchangeably with devaluation. Its opposite, an increase of value of a currency, is currency appreciation.

The depreciation of a country's currency refers to a decrease in the value of that country's currency. For instance, if the Canadian dollar depreciates relative to the euro, the exchange rate (the Canadian dollar price of euros) rises: it takes more Canadian dollars to purchase 1 euro (1 EUR=1.5 CAD → 1 EUR=1.7 CAD).

When the Canadian dollar depreciates relative to the euro, Canadian goods become more competitive on world markets because their price when exchanged to euro will be lower. The result will be an increase in Canadian exports. On the other hand, European sellers that denominate their goods and services in euros will be less competitive, because European products denominated in euros will be more expensive in Canada.

Depreciation (economics)

In economics, depreciation is the gradual decrease in the economic value of the capital stock of a firm, nation or other entity, either through physical depreciation, obsolescence or changes in the demand for the services of the capital in question. If the capital stock is in one period , gross (total) investment spending on newly produced capital is and depreciation is , the capital stock in the next period, , is . The net increment to the capital stock is the difference between gross investment and depreciation, and is called net investment.

Models

In economics, the value of a capital asset may be modeled as the present value of the flow of services the asset will generate in future, appropriately adjusted for uncertainty. Economic depreciation over a given period is the reduction in the remaining value of future services.

Under certain circumstances, such as an unanticipated increase in the price of the services generated by an asset or a reduction in the discount rate, its value may increase rather than decline. Depreciation is then negative.