Institutional sector

The classification of institutional sectors used is defined in the European System of Accounts 2010.

Sectorisation table (European System of Accounts 2010).

The main sectors are as follows:

• Total economy
• No
• financial corporations
• Financial institutions
• General Government
• Households
• Non-profit institutions serving households

Why do we use institutional sectors?

The economy of a country can be thought of as a system whereby economic agents (institutions and people) interact by exchanging and transferring goods, services and means of payment (e.g. cash) for the production and consumption of other goods and services.

Macroeconomic analysis does not consider the actions of individual economic agents separately. Instead, it looks at the combined activities of agents with similar economic behaviour. Therefore, economic agents with similar characteristics and behaviour are grouped into the same institutional sector. Each economic agent belongs to a single institutional sector, which can be further divided into subsectors.

In some statistics, the aforementioned classification is modified to facilitate the presentation of the statistics themselves and the subsequent analysis. These alternative classifications are called ‘sectorisation schemes’ at the Banco de España, and the groups they define are called ‘institutional groupings’.