Physical capital (economics) refers to infrastructural capital and natural capital in some ambiguous combination. As these are combined in process-specific and firm-specific ways that neoclassical macro-economics does not differentiate at its level of analysis, it is common to refer only to physical vs. human capital and seek so-called "balanced growth" that develops both in tandem.
Such analyses, however, fail to make distinctions considered critical by many modern economists:
- natural capital grows, while infrastructural capital must be built
- even "balanced" economic growth includes many processes thought to be, or lead to, uneconomic growth
- the rest problem - human capital requires rest and must make choices whether to seek rest or income, which physical capital does not make
