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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.
The Commission for Pension Reform 2020-2040 proposed an adjusted pension system which calculates pensions based on collected points. An important aspect of that system implied that past wages should be adjusted on the basis of the average wage increase. This Working Paper investigates who will be the winners and the losers when this adjustment mechanism is introduced by means of a points system in the salaried workers' scheme, and why. We show that people with low pensions, low-skilled workers, tenants and women nowadays have certain career features which make sure that they gain more often from such an operation than people with high pensions, highly skilled workers, owners and men. This also underlines the importance of minimum schemes in the impact of such a reform.
Working Papers - Working Paper 09-17 (nl),
This paper proposes a new model to account for unobserved heterogeneity in empirical modelling. The model extends the well-known Finite Mixture (or Latent Class) Model by using the Johnson family of distributions for the component densities. Due to the great variety of distributional shapes that can be assumed by the Johnson family, the method does not impose the usual a priori assumptions regarding the type of densities that are mixed.
Working Papers - Working Paper 14-17 (en),
Transport models used for long-term projections should reflect the impact of shared, automated and electric mobility modes. The objective of the current paper is to derive lessons from the existing literature on vehicle ownership modelling to find options to further improve the PLANET model, which is used for projections of transport demand in Belgium.
PLANET is already well equipped to represent the impacts of shared and automated cars on the opportunity cost of travel time, the load factors and the annual mileage of cars.
Working Papers - Working Paper 08-17 (en),
Forecasts & Outlook - OPHERMREG1701 (fr), (nl),
Other publications - FORVERG201701 (fr), (mix), (nl),
The goal of this paper is to estimate the efficiency cost of one additional euro of revenue through the personal income tax system, considering its simultaneous effects on the labour market and the transport market. More precisely, we seek to derive estimates of the Marginal Excess Burden of marginal personal income tax rates in Belgium considering the subsidization of company cars. We find that taking into account of welfare losses in the transport market adds 5-7 cents to the welfare cost of an additional euro of tax revenue, compared to models that consider only the effects on the labour market. The cost of raising the top marginal tax rate rises by 28% to 58% depending on the model assumptions. As an aside, we estimate tax expenditure on the transport sector via the personal income tax system to be 1.9 billion euro. We conclude that there is scope for welfare improving by base broadening and rate cutting. The framework is applied to analyse the merits of cash-for-car proposals.
Working Papers - Working Paper 07-17 (en),
Forecasts & Outlook - Economic outlook 2017-2022 (fr), (mix), (nl),
Forecasts & Outlook - Economic outlook 2017 - June 2017 (fr), (nl),
This Working Paper analyses the determinants of individual well-being in Belgium, using data from the EU-SILC survey. The analysis shows that on average health, both mental and physical, is the key determinant of well-being for Belgians. Enjoying sufficient income to access what is regarded as the prevailing standard of living in Belgium, having a job and being surrounded by loved ones also have a significant and positive impact on well-being. Besides these results for "average" Belgians, the analysis of different sub-groups highlights that these determinants are not of equal importance to all Belgians. These results contribute to the FPB’s work on the search for indicators complementary to GDP.
Working Papers - Working Paper 04-17 (en), (fr), (nl),
Supplementary table 29, "Accrued-to-date pension entitlements in social insurance" for Belgium will be published for the first time in 2017. This table covers the pension schemes in social insurance: statutory pensions and occupational pensions, whether they are funded or not. Table 29 shows the pensions entitlements on an accrued-to-date basis. These are present values of the pension entitlements of the retired population and the part of pension entitlements that is already accrued by the future beneficiaries. As such, accrued-to-date liabilities do not represent public debt and are not an indicator of the fiscal or financial sustainability of the pension systems and are only appropriate for national accounts purposes. Accrued-to-date liabilities should only be interpreted as an asset from the households in national accounts’ terminology. An assessment of the sustainability of the pension systems can be found in the reports of the Ageing Working Group or the Belgian Study Commission for Ageing.
Working Papers - Working Paper 06-17 (en),
This study presents a compact model that allows a stylised, yet dynamic reasoning on the main macrofiscal aggregates that are relevant for setting budgetary paths compatible with the structural budget balance requirements of the preventive arm of the Stability and Growth Pact. Some lessons on the conduct of fiscal policy in a reference framework in structural terms can be learned from the simulations provided for illustrative purposes. These simulations show in particular that – under certain conditions relating to the degree to which the budgetary adjustments have a permanent effect on the economic activity and thus on potential GDP – when the feedback effects of adjustments on the underlying macroeconomic environment are left out of consideration, this can be detrimental to the credibility of the considered structural paths.
Working Papers - Working Paper 05-17 (fr), (nl),
Working Papers - Working Paper 03-17 (nl),
Reports - REP_CEP8_11421 (mix),
Working Papers - Working Paper 02-17 (fr),
This report is an input to the preparation of the new Stability Programme and of the new National Reform Programme (NRP). It presents the assumptions and the main results of the preliminary version of the “Economic Outlook 2017-2022”. The final version of the outlook will be published in June 2017.
Forecasts & Outlook - Economic outlook 2017-2022 - March 2017 (fr), (nl),
Forecasts & Outlook - EFPOP1660 (fr), (nl),
Forecasts & Outlook - Economic outlook 2017 (fr), (nl),
In this report, different capacity portfolio and import scenarios for Belgium are investigated. They are based on the reports published by the Belgian transmission system operator Elia in 2016. Four scenarios are scrutinized differing in their overall context (level of carbon price) and/or in the choice of the content of their structural block. A fifth scenario is added which constitutes a sensitivity analysis: in this scenario, a considerable amount of new natural gas-fired power plants on top of the structural block is built on the Belgian territory in order to study the impact of a fairly lower level of (net) imports and even explore the net export option. The five scenarios are compared in order to assess potential longterm strategic choices from a societal perspective.
Reports - CBA_2017 (en),
This report presents a first update of a set of indicators complementary to GDP. These indicators cover the period from 1990 to 2015, depending on the availability of the data. The Act of 14 March 2014, which complements the Act of 21 December 1994 establishing social and diverse provisions with a set of complementary indicators to measure the quality of life, human development, social progress and the sustainability of our economy, entrusts the National Accounts Institute (NAI) with the development and calculation of a set of indicators representing the four above-mentioned components. The calculation results are published every year. The same Act of 14 March 14 2014 assigns the development of this set of indicators to the Federal Planning Bureau. The NAI published a first edition of this set of indicators in February 2016.
The data are available on www.indicators.be.
Other publications - OPREP201701 (fr), (nl),
Belgian government investment, and specifically the part spent on infrastructure, is relatively low both in historical terms and compared to neighbouring countries. A simulation with the European Commission’s Quest III model suggests that increasing government investment permanently by 0.5% of GDP leads to a growth in GDP, private consumption and private investment. The impact of alternative financing mechanisms is compared. Finally, a budget neutral shift of investment in favour of infrastructure is found to yield significant benefits in terms of GDP and its main components already in the medium run.
Working Papers - Working Paper 01-17 (en), (en),
European Regulation 691/2011 obliges the member states of the European Union to deliver three environmental economic accounts as of 2013. The accounts concerned are the Environmental Taxes by Economic Activity (ETEA), the Air Emissions Accounts (AEA) and the Economy-Wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA). In this publication the National Accounts Institute presents the EW-MFA for the years 2010-2014.
Other publications - EWMFA 2016 (fr), (nl),
This Working Paper presents, on the basis of information available until July 2016, a projection at unchanged policy until 2030 of the population at risk of poverty or social exclusion in Belgium, as defined in the framework of the Europe 2020 Strategy. This population should amount to 2.232 million people in 2018, or 418 000 more than the Europe 2020 target. By 2030, its share should shrink to 16.1%, still 5.6 percentage points higher than the goal resulting from the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Working Papers - Working Paper 12-16 (en), (fr), (nl),
This paper constitutes the contribution of the Federal Planning Bureau to the round table discussion with the Interdepartemental Commission for Sustainable Development of 11/2/2016 as part of task 1.3 of the SUSPENS research project. This paper gives a brief description of the climate and social policy in Belgium. The focus is on the policy goals to which Belgium has committed itself and on how far these have been achieved. The analysis shows that Belgium will have to make considerable efforts to achieve these goals and that cross-border cooperation will be necessary to realise the transition towards a low-carbon society.
Reports - REP 11362 (nl),
This paper seeks to quantify the size and traffic effects of commuting subsidies in Belgium. To this end we implement the most recently available data on both the personal income tax treatment of commuting reimbursement and subsidies to rail commuters in the PLANET model. We find that subsidy rates by tend to differ strongly by mode and by type of reimbursement. Commuting by own car is generally subsidized at low levels, if it enjoys any subsidy at all. Commuting by company car, bike and public transport enjoy relatively high levels of subsidization. Policy simulations show the importance of commuting subsidies in steering the modal split. Both the exemptions for commuting reimbursements as well as subsidies for rail commuters moderately steer traffic away from private transport, while also lengthening the average commute.
Working Papers - Working Paper 11-16 (en),
This Working Paper presents the projection methodology for internal migration, which is integrated from 2016 in the population projections published by the Federal Planning Bureau and Statistics Belgium. The methodology is based on migration intensity between districts, rather than on emigration rates from one district to another. With migration intensity, not only is the population of the departure district taken into account (population at risk of moving) but also the population of the destination district (as a proxy for attractiveness). The short-term evolution of migration intensity is in line with the most recent trends observed in a series of preferential migration flows between districts. In the long term, migration intensity is assumed to be constant.
Working Papers - Working Paper 10-16 (en),
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