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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.
For the projection of social sustainability indicators, the Federal Planning Bureau uses the dynamic microsimulation model MIDAS, which has recently undergone a major revision. In this working paper we report a projection up to 2070 of poverty risks and income inequality among the elderly, pensioners and the population under 65 years, in a scenario with current pension policies and projected demographic and socio-economic evolutions.
Working Papers - Working Paper 03-23 (nl),
On 1 October 2021, the government approved a new five-year Federal Plan for Sustainable Development. This plan is at the heart of federal sustainable development policy and this Working Paper describes the methodology for monitoring its implementation. The results are also presented here for the first time, and this exercise will be repeated every year from this spring onwards. It shows that in just one year, the public services have already reported on the implementation of more than 90% of the measures and that only 30% of the measures are not (yet) in an implementation phase.
Working Papers - Working Paper 04-23 (fr), (nl),
MIDAS, the dynamic microsimulation model that focuses on the social sustainability of pensions, has undergone a major revision in recent years to improve the validity of the projections. This Working Paper not only reports on this revision, but also describes some important new modules.
Working Papers - Working Paper 02-23 (nl), (nl),
In international agreements, countries are considered responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions linked to their production activities. The carbon footprint provides an alternative assessment of this responsibility by attributing emissions to the country where the goods and services are consumed. This study presents the production-based CO2 emissions and the carbon footprint of the three Belgian regions for the year 2015. The production-based CO2 emissions are derived from the regional air emission accounts developed for this study, while the regional carbon footprints are calculated based on an input-output model and input-output data that include CO2 emissions. According to the results, the carbon footprint exceeds production-based emissions for all three regions. This implies that their contribution to global CO2 emissions is larger from a consumption perspective than from a production perspective.
Working Papers - Working Paper 01-23 (fr), (nl),
In Belgium, the Law on Fiscal and Social Greening of Mobility of 25 November 2021 eliminates corporate tax deductibility for all company cars except those with zero CO2 emissions. The main effect of the tax reform is an accelerated electrification of the company car fleet and an accelerated decline in CO2 emissions. Compared to the no-reform scenario, the reform leads to an increase in net tax revenues of about 1 billion euro on an annual basis.
Working Papers - Working Paper 06-22 (en), (nl),
A macro-economic analysis of the activity of multinational groups is of particular interest for economic policy in a country like Belgium with a longstanding tradition of openness to foreign investment. This working paper combines a database of enterprise groups that are active in Belgium with industry-level data from the national accounts to show that multinational groups play an important role in the Belgian economy. Together, foreign affiliates and firms that are part of a Belgian multinational group account for more than 40% of GDP, 25% of total employment and 75% of exports.
Working Papers - Working Paper 05-22 (fr),
In the context of the significant increase in the number of beneficiaries of the health and disability insurance observed over the last 20 years in Belgium, we seek to develop an explanatory model for work incapacity and disability. On the basis of SILC data, we attempt to identify and prioritise the effects of different factors that may influence the probability of employees' transitions between socio-economic statutes, and in particular to and from primary incapacity and disability.
Working Papers - Working Paper 04-22 (fr),
Working Papers - Working Paper 03-22 (fr), (nl),
This Paper describes how the multiregional bottom-up HERMREG model works, using five (regional or federal) economic policy variants and a world demand shock.
Working Papers - Working Paper 02-22 (fr), (nl),
This Working Paper describes the main characteristics of the multiregional bottom-up model, named HERMREG. This model is used by the Federal Planning Bureau (FPB) and its three regional partners in the HERMREG project (IBSA-BISA, IWEPS, Statistiek Vlaanderen) to analyse the short and medium-term impact of economic policies in the three Belgian regions.
Working Papers - Working Paper 01-22 (fr), (nl),
This paper examines what role offshore wind can play in helping Belgium achieve climate neutrality by 2050. The Belgian Exclusive Economic Zone is limited and its exploitation for energy purposes cannot be extended indefinitely. Therefore, this paper looks at the development of joint hybrid offshore wind projects that both provide renewable energy capacity and can serve as interconnectors linking different countries. Two scenarios are defined and studied. They differ in the level of ambition for these hybrid hubs and the necessary electricity supply for a de-fossilised Belgian economy.
Working Papers - Working Paper 08-21 (en),
The Federal Planning Bureau has built the 2015 interregional input-output table for Belgium within the framework of an agreement with the statistical authorities of the three Regions (BISA/IBSA, VSA and IWEPS). This paper describes the methodology and data sources used to compile this table.
Working Papers - Working Paper 07-21 (fr), (nl),
The first part of this Working Paper discusses the main trends in Belgium regarding the risk of poverty, compared to those in the EU27 and neighbouring countries. A second part shows that the increase in the risk of poverty in the population under 60 years can be partly attributed to an increase in the concentration of the lack of paid work in certain households. Also, social security benefits and social assistance benefits are less and less successful in raising jobless households above the poverty threshold.
Working Papers - Working Paper 06-21 (nl),
This paper considers the evolution in business dynamism and its potential link with productivity growth in Belgium. Statistics on business creation, the exit of enterprises and within-industry reallocation are presented. Data on Belgian firms, covering the period 2003-2017, are used for a decomposition of productivity growth. The paper provides robust indications of the substantial contribution of productivity growth of start-ups in the early years after entry.
Working Papers - Working Paper 05-21 (en),
This Working Paper puts the policy choices made in the regional child benefit reforms into perspective. Using the microsimulation model EXPEDITION, the expected direct effects of these reforms on child benefit expenditure and income distribution are mapped out. Special attention is paid to the effects on the simulated poverty risk of (families with) children, as this was a shared concern during the reforms in the different regions.
Working Papers - Working Paper 04-21 (nl),
The debate on the affordability of pensions is mostly limited to legal pensions while thus far, the affordability of supplementary pensions has hardly received any attention. Nevertheless, an increase in these pensions also affects public finances considering the lower government revenues that result from the various tax incentives used to promote supplementary pension saving. In this report we calculate the total impact of tax incentives for second pillar pensions on Belgian public finances.
Working Papers - Working Paper 03-21 (nl),
The "first recruitments"measure aims to promote employment while supporting small businesses and start-ups. The analysis shows that the measure has a positive but modest impact on the probability of survival of young businesses. Furthermore, the reinforcement in 2016 does not appear to have generated any additional benefit. On the one hand, these results imply that the strengthening of the measure does not address a genuine need on the part of the recipients. On the other hand, the reinforcement may have encouraged more employers to undertake a risky business activity.
Working Papers - Working Paper 02-21 (fr),
This working paper describes main evolutions in household expenditure for transport in Belgium. Results are based on data from national accounts (National Accounts Institute, Eurostat) as well as data from Household budget surveys (Statbel).
Working Papers - Working Paper 01-21 (fr),
Has the production process of the industries that do the most R&D in Belgium changed over the last 10 years? This analysis attempts to answer this question using both sectoral and company data.
Working Papers - Working Paper 07-20 (fr), (nl),
The aim of this study is to take a step back about teleworking as a tool to tackle mobility issues. Beyond the renewed interest in the public debate from which teleworking benefits, and its strong emphasis since the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, the aim here is to use reliable sources and proven models to identify the relationship between increased teleworking and decreased transport demand. To this end, the PLANET model of the Federal Planning Bureau has been adapted to explicitly take into account changes in this practice in its long-term projections.
Working Papers - Working Paper 06-20 (fr),
Working Papers - Working Paper 05-20 (fr), (fr), (nl), (nl),
In this report, the Federal Planning Bureau sets out to scrutinise the place hydrogen can occupy in the future Belgian energy system by 2050. In fact, this publication focuses on two divergent evolutions of energy (end) uses: on the one hand, a far-reaching electrification of the final energy consumption, on the other, a sustained and increased use of gas for transport, (industrial) heating and power generation. Different outcomes of the two future visions are reported such as the required investments in infrastructure (interconnections, electrolysers, storage).
Working Papers - Working Paper 04-20 (en),
This Working Paper presents the methodology that has been applied since 2020 in the model used to draw up the population outlook for Belgium. The methodology considers that fertility is explained by both structural (education, labour market participation, etc.) and cyclical factors (the economic cycle, etc.). Those factors are taken into account through three elements: (1) expert opinion on long-term fertility trends, (2) an explicit trend in the fertility schedule and (3) the effect of cyclical and structural determinants of fertility using an error-correction model.
Working Papers - Working Paper 03-20 (en),
Working Papers - DC2019_WP_07 (fr), (nl),
This Working paper proposes four new composite indicators to measure the wellbeing’s sustainability by using the stock of capitals passed on to the future generations. These indicators measure the evolution of the human, social, natural and economic capital. Their analysis shows that wellbeing’s sustainability in Belgium is questioned due to the diminution of the natural capital.
Working Papers - Working Paper 02-20 (fr), (nl),
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