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Since 1994, the Federal Planning Bureau is responsible for drawing up the five-year input-output tables for Belgium. These tables are a unique tool for analysing the interdependences between the branches of the Belgian economy. When integrated in an input-output model, they provide rapidly different synthetic measures of the interdependences. The WP presents two classic applications of the IO models : multipliers and linkage measures.
A major concern regarding the consequences of offshoring is about the labour market position of low‐skilled workers. This paper provides evidence for Belgium that offshoring has had a negative impact on the employment share of low‐skilled workers in the manufacturing sector between 1995 and 2007. The main contribution to the fall in the low‐skilled employment share came from materials offshoring to Central and Eastern Europe (21%), followed by business services offshoring (8%). In manufacturing industries with a higher ICT capital intensity the impact of offshoring is smaller. For market services industries, no robust conclusions regarding the impact of offshoring on low‐skilled employment could be drawn.
Users of Supply and Use Tables (SUT) and Input-Output Tables (IOT) compiled in different national accounts (NA) vintages face a problem of consistency of their data due to revisions in the NA. This paper describes the methodology that has been followed to compile a consistent time series of Belgian SUT and IOT for the period 1995-2007, in line with the NA published in November 2010.
Short Term Update (STU) is the quarterly newsletter of the Belgian Federal Planning Bureau. It contains, in English, the main conclusions from the publications of the FPB, as well as information on new publications, together with an analysis of the most recent economic indicators.
Offshoring is generally believed to be productivity-enhancing and this belief is underpinned by economic theory. This article contributes to the growing literature that tests empirically whether offshoring does indeed help to improve productivity. Estimating the impact of materials and business services offshoring on productivity growth with industry-level data for Belgium over the period 1995-2004, we investigate this issue separately for manufacturing and market services. The results show that there is no productivity effect of materials offshoring, while business services offshoring leads to productivity gains especially in manufacturing. In addition, we look at the possibility of rent spillovers from offshoring. Productivity gains from offshoring in one industry may feed through to other industries that purchase its output for intermediate use if, due to offshoring, the user value exceeds the price of the output. The lack of evidence of such rent spillovers from either materials or business services offshoring in the data leads us to conclude that firms manage to internalise all efficiency gains from offshoring.
In the national accounts labour inputs are collected by industry. Homogenising means transforming labour inputs by industry into labour inputs by product. This homogenisation is done using mathematical techniques. The paper compares the results for two wellknown techniques (product technology and industry technology) and discusses the effects of homogenisation on Belgian data for the years 2000 and 2005. Labour inputs are detailed by gender and education level. An additional distinction is made between employees and self-employed. The paper proposes a solution for the negatives problem that arises when applying the product technology model in the case of self-employed workers. It also assesses the plausibility of results by showing the effects of homogenising on wage costs and value added per head as well as on the ranking of industries by education level. The product and the industry technology model yield significantly different results, most particularly for the employment use of wholesale and retail trade. The results of the product technology model are judged to be most plausible
This Working Paper gives an overall picture of the horeca industry in Belgium. The study focuses in particular on aspects of business demography, the importance of the sector for the Belgian economy, its development since the mid‐nineties and the financial health of horeca companies. Since the provision of horeca services is a very labour‐intensive activity, special attention is paid to employment features.
In this working paper the evolution of expenditures for research and development (R&D) in Belgium, in the period 1995-2007, is compared to the evolution in ten other EU countries. R&D expenditures by companies established in Belgium evolved quite favourably up to 2001 but subsequently not only did R&D intensity in Belgium decrease but the position relative to other countries deteriorated as well. This evolution seems to be due mainly to a decline in the share of a significant number of industries in Belgium in the overall R&D expenditures of the group of countries considered, and less the result of the type of industries in which Belgian companies have specialized.
The Federal Planning Bureau’s user charter was approved and signed by the Executive Council in June 2010. It covers a number of commitments concerning the term of treatment, office opening hours, publication distribution and the evaluation of services offered.
The present paper computes cumulative employment generated by the Belgian environmental industry. Relying on Belgian input-output tables for the year 2000 and on detailed
employment data (SAM sub?]matrix), we investigate the patterns of the employment in the environmental industry, by considering the worker types differentiated by gender, educational attainment or a combination of these characteristics. The employment multiplier analysis of environmental employment reveals some interesting differences between employment of the overall economy and environmental employment for the level of education as well as for the gender type.
This paper illustrates the deficiency of the production approach as a tool to measure a country’s responsibility for international environmental impacts. A use approach is presented as a more suitable tool. The difference between the two approaches is determined by a better grasp of international trade, which can lead to environmental leakage when a country specialises in the production of environmentally friendly products and has the environmentally unfriendly products which it consumes produced abroad. We show that in the period 1995-2002 Belgium was on average a provider of air emission intensive products for the rest of the world. Environmental leakage was mostly negative. However, the evolution of the Belgian environmental terms of trade shows that by 2002 its imports had become considerably more air emission intensive with respect to its exports than in 1995. There are indications that this evolution is due to a considerable increase of extra-EU imports of air emission intensive products. This in turn could point to environmentally inspired offshoring. However, the currently available data do not allow us to test this hypothesis.
This Working Paper introduces the notion of qualitative employment multipliers. These show the employment use by sex, age class, professional status, educational attainment level and labour regime for each final demand product. The paper describes the methodology and presents three applications based on input-output data and detailed employment data for Belgium for the years 2000 and 2002.
The study identifies the goods and services that most extensively use low skilled labour and determines the direct and indirect use of high skilled labour in the production of ICT goods and services. The third application is to generate qualitative employment multipliers per final demand component, distinguishing exports, investment and household or government and NPISH consumption.
