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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.
Each year, the Federal Planning Bureau (fpb) prepares a medium-term outlook for the Belgian economy with its macro-econometric hermes model. One of the key inputs of this exercise is a baseline scenario for the Belgian international economic environment, which includes an outlook for the output, imports, prices and financial variables of the major trading partners of Belgium. Traditionally, this international environment is based on the medium-term outlook presented by the European Commission in its Autumn Forecasts or the most recent available medium-term outlook of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd).
Working Papers - Working Paper 12-03 (en),
This Working Paper reflects the contribution of the fpb to the second work package of the agir project, work package organized by the German diw. It collects in a first attempt a lot of data to approach the volume and evolution of the use of health and nursing care by the elderly. Yet the authors are well aware of the limitations of the present study which can certainly be improved by more detailed data and refinement of the concepts.
Working Papers - Working Paper 11-03 (en),
This Working Paper reflects the contribution of the fpb to the first work package of the agir project, organized by the Spanish fedea. It thoroughly studies the bio-demographic aspects of population ageing. The aim is to get a better understanding of the nature of ageing. Not only is it important to analyse how fast a population gets older, it is also important to see what effect age has on the population’s health and fitness, especially of the elderly.
Working Papers - Working Paper 10-03 (en),
The macro-econometric nime model is one of the analytical tools used by the Belgian Federal Planning Bureau to improve its understanding of developments in the Belgian international economic environment. This paper shows some concrete applications with this model by analysing the spill-over effects of shocks from the United States (us) to the euro area and the rest of the world. The shocks we investigate are a temporary increase in public expenditures in the us, a us-led world-wide permanent increase in total factor productivity, an increase in the risk premium in the us stock market, and a temporary 1 percentage point increase in the us short-term interest rate. Here, we will discuss how these shocks affect economic activity in the us and how they are transmitted to the euro area. Such an analysis can be useful because it catalogues answers to questions which are often posed by economists who want to assess their medium term projection of the euro area economy.
Working Papers - Working Paper 09-03 (en),
Other publications - Euren Summer Report (en),
Other publications - IT 01-2003 (fr), (nl),
In the empirical literature, the missing link between ict investments and increa-ses in firm performance is organisational change. This paper aims to assess the impact of ict at firm-level in Belgium, by means of case studies with 220 firms in four sectors: banking, machinery, printing/publishing and transport. The chosen sectors were ict-intensive in 1995, have enjoyed productivity growth during the 1995-2000 period and were probably ready for reorganisation at the time of the interviews.
Working Papers - Working Paper 08-03 (en),
Economic activity remained subdued in the euro area in the last quarter of 2002 and early estimates point to a stabilisation in the first quarter of the current year. International organizations are forecasting a gradual but only modest recovery in the course of 2003. In Belgium, GDP growth was higher than in the main neighbouring countries in the last quarter of 2002. This should also be the case in the first quarter of 2003. The FPB leading indicator for Belgium confirms the scenario of a recovery during the course of 2003. Annual GDP growth should nevertheless be only slightly above 1% this year.
Various risks could jeopardise the recovery in the euro zone: the continuing depreciation of the USD, and a slower recovery of confidence due to the situation in the labour market and/or the stock market. The medium-term outlook for Belgium is pointing towards a GDP growth rate of 2.4% during the 2004-08 period, which is slightly higher than potential (2.1%).This favourable development is due to both net exports and domestic demand. Private consumption should become more dynamic during the 2004-2008 period, particularly thanks to the increase in households’ disposable income (especially due to tax reform). Investment growth should attain 3% during the 2004-08 period, mainly reflecting the increase in business investment. Average export growth should be 5.3% during the same period and the contribution of net exports to GDP growth should be 0.3%. Thanks to limited wage and import cost increases and a negative output gap in the first years of the projection, the inflation rate will remain below 2% in the medium term.
The development of employment should reflect the favourable macroeconomic context, the limited increases in wage costs and various policy measures. After stagnating in 2003, about 32,000 jobs should be created every year during the 2004-2008 period (as compared with 43,000 jobs created on average during 1996-2002). Industrial employment should fall by 38,000 persons during the 2003-2008 period and the number of jobs created in market services should exceed 200,000. The unemployment rate (including long term unemployment of older workers) is still increasing in 2003 (from 13.3% to 14.0%), but will subsequently fall to 12.9% in 2008. The proportion of active job seekers within broad unemployment will increase, due to recent policy measures aimed at limiting early retirement.
The public accounts are expected to show a clear deterioration, with a net public administrations borrowing requirement appearing in 2003. Equilibrium is not expected to be reached until the end of the period covered by the forecast.
Closed series - Short Term Update 02-03 (en),
Other publications - Report 01-03 (fr), (nl),
Forecasts & Outlook - Economic outlook 2003-2008 (fr), (nl),
Working Papers - Working Paper 07-03 (fr),
Since 1994 the Federal Planning Bureau has been using the annual version of the econometric model modtrim as a central tool to produce its short-term macroeconomic forecasts. At the origin of the project, and as its name indicates, this annual version was meant to be short-lived and quickly replaced by a quarterly version. Unfortunately, the lack of quarterly national accounts prevented from doing so for several years. In 1998, the Institute for National Accounts published official quarterly accounts for the first time and the construction of the quarterly version of the model started in Spring 2000. On that occasion, the opportunity was taken to reassess all behavioural equations of the model. The more limited availability of quarterly data, in comparison with annual data, implied that a more aggregated version of the accounting framework of the yearly model had to be constructed.
Working Papers - Working Paper 06-03 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 05-03 (fr), (nl),
Forecasts & Outlook - Economic Forecasts 2003 C
In the first half of 2002 the world economy seemed to recover from the sharp decline during 2001. This recovery was not, however, confirmed during the second half of the year.
In this muddled international business climate, the recovery of the Belgian economy is postponed until the second half of 2003. In annual average terms, GDP should grow this year by 1.3%. For the first two quarters of this year, positive but very modest GDP growth is assumed. Growth should be higher during the second half of the year, but clearly not as high as seen in previous economic recoveries in 1996 and 1999. Under these circumstances, the employment rate should fall for the second consecutive year, thus scoring 0.6 points lower than its previous peak in 2001. Consumer price inflation should remain rather stable at around 1.4%.
As economic agents are at present spellbound by the growing threat of a war in the Middle East, and the outcome of that conflict situation is hard to predict, the uncertainty margin surrounding the international economic context, is of course extremely high.
Closed series - Short Term Update 01-03 (en),
This paper describes the compilation of the use tables for imports of goods and for trade margins for Belgium in 1995. It introduces a methodological novelty by integrating the compilation of both tables and systematically exploiting the fact that large parts of intermediary consumption and investment (i.e. those directly imported by the using firms) as well as exports (the direct exports by producers) bear no trade margins.
In order to do this we used intrastat and extrastat data on imports and exports of goods in 1995. The results of this approach differ significantly from those of a proportional distribution of imports and margins. Many statistical offices resort to this proportional distribution because of a lack of survey data on the destination of trade margins and imports. In Belgium the proportional approach is less appropriate because the product detail is too limited and the national account data are firm-based without distinguishing local kind of activities.
Working Papers - Working Paper 04-03 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 02-03 (nl),
Reports - Sustainable development Report 2002 (fr), (nl),
Reports - Sustainable development Report Summary 2002 (de), (en), (fr), (nl),
Reports - Sustainable development Report 2002 - Folder (fr), (nl),
Reports - Sustainable development Report 2002 - CD Rom
Other publications - Input-Output Table 1995 (fr), (nl),
Network industries are industries whose activity involves conveying people, products or information from one place to the other via some kind of physical network. They include transport networks, information networks and utility networks. Network industries basically consist of three types of activity: upstream activities involving the production of core products such as equipment and means of transport; infrastructure activities involving the construction, maintenance and operation of the physical network; downstream activities involving the delivery of network services to final consumers. Network industries have specific characteristics from an economic point of view. Three of these are particularly notable, the last one also from a social perspective.
Working Papers - Working Paper 01-03 (en),
This overview of the literature dedicated to the new economic geography intends to highlight the main mechanisms, which contribute to explain the spatial concentration of economic activity, in particular the formation of cities and industrial districts. This should provide some guidelines for an empirical analysis of the determinants of the spatial distribution of economic activity in urban areas in Belgium and for suggestions of economic policy instruments capable of influencing location choices.
Working Papers - Working Paper 16-02 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 15-02 (nl),
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