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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.
Working Papers - Working Paper 13-03 (fr), (nl),
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),
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),
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),
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),
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),
The aim of this working paper is to carry out a descriptive analysis of the geographical concentration of the manufacturing sector in Belgium, from which geographical agglomeration of sectors of activity is analyzed at a fine industrial level, i.e. NACEBEL 4-digit industries.
Working Papers - Working Paper 14-02 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 13-02 (nl),
We are grateful to our colleagues at the Federal Planning Bureau and to staff at the National Accounts Division of the National Bank of Belgium for their comments and suggestions. We also like to thank Marleen Keytsman for her help in preparing the document. All remaining errors are ours.
In this paper, a methodology is proposed for the construction of ICT investment and capital stocks in Belgium. The series are obtained in nominal and in real terms and at macroeconomic as well as sector level. The ICT assets distinguished are IT equipment and communications equipment, leaving software out of the analysis. After calculation of investment expenditure on both assets, the expenditure is transformed into quality-adjusted volume terms by means of harmonised price indices derived from appropriate U.S. indices. Productive capital stocks are calculated by means of the perpetual inventory method, and rental prices of the ICT capital services are obtained as well.
Working Papers - Working Paper 12-02 (en),
In this paper, we investigate with a macroeconometric world model how mone-tary policy rules affect economic activity in the euro area. In the economic literature, there is a general consensus that a credible monetary policy rule is to be preferred to discretionary interventions by central banks because monetary surprises can increase expected inflation and worsen economic performance (Kydland and Prescott (1977)). Several monetary policy rules have been proposed, for example, money targeting (Friedman (1956)), inflation targeting (Bernanke et al. (1999)), nominal income targeting (Hall and Mankiw (1994), Frankel and Chinn (1995)), and an interest rate rule that targets inflation and output relative to a reference value (Taylor (1993)). Although the theoretical merits of these rules have been thoroughly discussed in the literature, the empirical investigation of the implications of these rules has only recently commenced (Bryant et al. (1993)).
Working Papers - Working Paper 11-02 (en),
This brief overview will consider e-gov achievements and plans at each policy level, together with the specific organizational and management systems that are being constructed for the purpose of implementing them. E-gov can be considered as a very large object to study. The aim of this paper is not to be exhaustive but to give an overview of the most significant initiatives in the area.
In Belgium e-gov is not an end in itself but is considered as a tool of the so-called “Copernicus Plan” (www.copernicus.be) to modernize the public service in order to achieve better service delivery to citizens, better functioning of the civil services and a simplification of administrative burdens.
Working Papers - Working Paper 10-02 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 09-02 (fr),
The macroeconomic results presented here - as summarised in Table 2 - are based on ICT investment expenditure data that are compatible with the data of the 1995 input-output. As the level of the revised ICT investment expenditure is larger than the ICT investment expenditure used in WP 7-02, the results of the growth accounting exercise point to a somewhat larger contribution of ICT Capital accumulation to growth.
Working Papers - Working Paper 08-02 (en),
In this paper, the impact of ICT on economic and productivity growth is investigated in the context of the Belgian economy. The analysis is conducted at aggregate and branch level. The impact of ICT on economic growth through productivity gains can be transmitted via three different channels, namely increase in the ICT capital available per worker (capital deepening), technical progress in the ICT producer sectors (TFP growth) and finally, technical progress in the ICT user sectors through spillover effects (TFP growth).
Working Papers - Working Paper 07-02 (en),
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.
Working Papers - Working Paper 06-02 (en),
In this paper, we investigate how automatic fiscal stabilisers affect economic activity in the euro area. For this purpose we apply several shocks to the NIME-model, and we compare the adjustment path of the main macroeconomic variables under a regime that allows the automatic fiscal stabilisers to operate fully, with the results for a regime that tempers the working of the automatic fiscal stabilisers. We also compare the results for the euro area with results for the United States and Japan.
In the second section of this paper, we briefly describe the NIME model. In the third section, we present simulation results for various shocks under two different fiscal regimes.
Working Papers - Working Paper 05-02 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 04-02 (nl),
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