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To promote transparency and provide information, the Federal Planning Bureau regularly publishes the methods and results of its works. The publications are organised in different series, such as Outlooks, Working Papers and Planning Papers. Some reports can be consulted here, along with the Short Term Update newsletters that were published until 2015. You can search our publications by theme, publication type, author and year.
In Belgium, as well as in other European countries, the use of R&D tax incentives has become more popular in recent years. It remains, however, important to evaluate the effectiveness of those new and existing measures.
Articles - Working Paper 06-06
In this paper, the tools and methods currently used at the FPB are classified in three groups: national models; international models; and other tools and methods. The listed FPB’s instruments are used to produce analyses and projections in a wide range of areas: business cycle analyses and short-term forecasting, macro-sectoral analyses and medium-term outlook, long-term projections and the issue of ageing, intersectoral relationships, international economics, labour market analyses, public finance, demographic analyses, transport economics, energy market analyses, environmental issues and sustainable development. This paper gives only a bird’s-eye view of the most important tools and methods. At the end of each instrument’s description, references to a short-list of technical papers, applications and to FPB contact addresses can be found.
Articles - Working Paper 07-06
Two Working Papers on the macroeconomic impact of network industry reform have been published. The first is a detailed report in Dutch, the second a summary paper in English. The analysis builds on a simulation by FPB’s macroeconometric model HERMES, and a simulation by IMF’s general equilibrium model GEM. Although both simulations were based on the same exogenous input, they gave significantly different outcomes. This sheds light on the applicability of different modelling approaches to an issue at hand.
Articles - Working Paper 08-06 / 10-06
This working paper analyses public financing in two countries that have already reached the Barcelona goal (R&D expenditure on GDP at least equal to 3%), Finland and Sweden, and compares it with the situation in Belgium. This comparison covers not only the quantitative aspects but also the organisational dimension of the public support for innovation.
Articles - Working Paper 09-06
The August 2006 issue of the NIME Outlook for the World Economy presents a 2006-2012 macroeconomic outlook for the major areas of the world. The outlook was produced using nime, the Federal Planning Bureau’s macroeconometric world model. The August 2006 issue also features a stochastic evaluation of the projection’s main results for the euro area, for the group of countries comprising Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom, for the US and for Japan.
Articles - NIME 2006 - AUG
In network industries the market reform that is being pursued by national and supranational authorities should lead to an improvement of efficiency, which spills over into a beneficial macroeconomic impact. This paper presents two alternative simulations of the potential impact in Belgium. These simulations give very different outcomes, but are still complementary. A macroeconometric approach seems to be more realistic in the short and mid term because it has been built up from observed behavioural relationships. A general-equilibrium approach gives rise to drawing some lessons about the conditions that make the impact more pronounced in the long term.
Working Papers - Working Paper 10-06 (en),
Working Papers - Working paper 09-06 (mix),
In the Royal Decree de dato December 6, 2005 (published in the Belgian Official Journal1 of December 19, 2005) the installation of a Commission Energy 2030 was officialised: the Commission is made up of a number of Belgian and foreign experts who will carefully scrutinize the energy future of Belgium on a long term horizon (2030). In order to fulfil this task, it was decided to start from a quantitative, scientific base. Because of the long expertise in modelling and analysing of long term energy projections, the Federal Planning Bureau (FPB) was asked to take up the task of providing the Commission with the necessary input. This input will subsequently be studied by the Commission, as well as complemented with analyses and other activities executed in its bosom.
This report aims at gathering the work carried out by the FPB in the above framework. The heart of the analysis of the Belgian energy outlook to 2030 is provided by a set of energy scenarios. These scenarios provide a quantitative basis for the analysis of environmental, energy and economic challenges Belgium will be faced with in the coming years. Doing so, the analysis gives a valuable input to the report the Commission Energy 2030 has to deliver to M. Verwilghen, the federal Minister of Energy.
Other publications - REPENERGY0601 (en), (en),
Closed series - Planning Paper 101 (fr), (nl),
Working Papers - Working Paper 08-06 (nl),
Working Papers - Working Paper 07-06 (en), (fr), (nl),
The August 2006 issue of the NIME Outlook for the World Economy presents a 2006-2012 macroeconomic projection for the major areas of the world. The outlook was produced using NIME, the Belgian Federal Planning Bureau’s macroeconometric world model. This issue features a stochastic evaluation of its world economic outlook. The major technical assumptions behind the outlook as well as a brief description of the NIME model are presented in the appendix.
Forecasts & Outlook - NEO 02-06 (en),
Other publications - Kyoto 2006 (mix),
Working Papers - Working Paper 06-06 (nl),
The Belgian Study Group on Ageing of the High Council of Finance, in its Annual Report, publishes the results of research on the budgetary and social effects of ageing. In this context, the Federal Planning Bureau, in its capacity as secretariat and main research body of the Committee, has in recent years been stepping up its efforts to deve lop models based on socioeconomic micro data. The results of one of these models, de signed to make short-term projections of poverty indicators, are presented in this paper.
Working Papers - Working paper 05-06 (en),
This paper describes the operating mode of the two existing Belgian fiscal councils as well as their role in the budgetary planning process. These institutions, created or reformed in depth in a context of large public deficits and increasing public debt-to-GDP ratios coupled with the regionalization of the Belgian state, are the result of a maturing process. The National Accounts Institute covers the positive side of the budgetary process, while the High Council of Finance deals with the normative side. Concerning the former domain, the creation of an independent institution to provide unbiased forecasts undeniably contributed to the consolidation of public finances in Belgium. In the context of the revised Stability and Growth Pact, lessons drawn from the Belgian experience can certainly be useful for other Member States willing to improve their fiscal institutional settings. Our chief recommendations for making the budgetary process successful are: institutions dealing with positive economics should enjoy a fully independent status but remain public; positive and normative issues should be completely separated from an institutional point of view; and responsibility should be shared between several strong independent institutions so as to minimize political pressure.
Working Papers - Working paper 04-06 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 03-06 (mix),
Within the Belgian National Accounts Institute, the Federal Planning Bureau (FPB) has been assigned responsibility for the environmental satellite accounts. One of these accounts is the National Accounting Matrix including Environmental Accounts for Air pollution (NAMEA Air). The NAMEA Air for Belgium currently contains data on greenhouse gas emissions, acidifying emissions, photochemical emissions, emissions of fine dust particles and emissions of lead for 1990 and for the period 1994-2002. The air pollutant that has received the most attention over the last decade is, without any doubt, carbon dioxide, the emissions of which are closely linked to energy use. This special topic investigates the driving forces behind the changes in CO2 emissions by the Belgian industries by means of decomposition analysis. Emissions by households are thus not considered. The industries were responsible for the largest part of Belgian CO2 emissions, more specifically 76%, in 2002. In that year, CO2 emissions represented 87% of total greenhouse gas emissions covered by the Kyoto protocol.
Articles - Article 2006051901
After the compromise that was reached at the European Council of December 2005, the European Parliament finally approved, on 17 May 2006, the European budget for the next seven years (the Financial Perspective 2007-2013).
Articles - Working Paper 03-06
This Working Paper presents the methodology and results of a stochastic simulation evaluation of the risks related to the medium-term world economic outlook produced using the Federal Planning Bureau’s NIME model in January 2006. The results include confidence intervals around a baseline projection for the euro area, the United States and Japan, as well as probability estimates for specific occurrences.
Articles - Working Paper 02-06
The medium-term outlook for Belgium points towards an average GDP growth rate of 2.2% during the 2006-2011 period, which is slightly higher than potential (2.0%). This pace of growth should follow a slowdown in economic growth in 2005 (1.5%) and a rebound in 2006 (2.4%). Economic growth in Belgium should remain slightly higher than in the euro area, on average.
Despite moderate wage increases, the average yearly growth rate for private consumption should reach 1.8% during the 2006-2011 period, in particular because of the increase in household disposable income (stimulated especially by reductions in personal income tax and increases in employment and social benefits). Investment growth should reach 2.5% during the 2006-2011 period, mainly reflecting the path of business investment growth, but also an acceleration in public investment at the end of the projection period. Growth in exports should be 5.4% on average and the contribution of net exports to GDP growth is expected to be 0.3%-points. The external surplus, which was strongly reduced between 2002 and 2005, should increase again after 2007 and attain 3.2% of GDP in 2011 (partly as a result of the improvement of the terms of trade). Limited increases in wage costs, the decline in oil prices after 2007 and a negative output gap until the end of the projection period, should allow the inflation rate to remain below 2% in the medium term.
The expected evolution of employment reflects a favourable macroeconomic context, a limited increase in wage costs and various policy measures. After the net creation of approximately 39,000 and 41,000 jobs in 2005 and 2006 respectively, about 35,000 jobs should be created every year during the 2007-2011 period. Between 2005 and 2011, industrial employment should fall by 30,000 persons, but the number of jobs created in market services should exceed 250,000. Nevertheless, in view of the strong increase in the labour force (mainly in the 50-64 age class) the fall in unemployment will be limited to 38,000 persons. The unemployment rate (broad administrative statistics) should fall from 14.3% in 2005 to 13.1% in 2011.
Under the assumption of constant policy, public accounts are expected to deteriorate markedly, with a net public financing requirement of 0.3% of GDP appearing in 2006, widening to 1.2% in 2007, before gradually falling to 0.3% by the end of the projection period. Nevertheless, the total public debt to GDP ratio is still expected to decline from 93.9% in 2005 to 78.0% in 2011.
Closed series - Short Term Update 02-06 (en),
Forecasts & Outlook - Economic outlook 2006-2011 (fr), (nl),
Other publications - OPVERG200601 - Report (fr), (nl),
In this Working Paper, we describe how we used stochastic simulation to evaluate the risks surrounding the January 2006 nime Economic Outlook (neo) for the world economy. We summarise the main results by showing confidence intervals around the baseline projection as well as probabilities that certain events will occur. The results presented in this Working Paper are of an illustrative nature and do not constitute an update of the January 2006 nime Economic Outlook.
Working Papers - Working Paper 02-06 (en),
Other publications - Network industries 2006 (en),
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