News
Press releases
Events
The last five databases
Publications
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.
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),
PLANET is a model developed by the Belgian Federal PLANning Bureau that models the relationship between Economy and Transport. Its aim is to produce: (i) medium- and long-term projections of transport demand in Belgium, both for passenger and freight transport; (ii) simulations of the effects of transport policy measures; (iii) cost-benefit analyses of transport policy measures. This methodological report describes the main features of the PLANET model, and more specifically, the version 4.0 used for the transport outlook published in January 2019.
Working Papers - Working Paper 01-20 (en),
This paper presents an estimation of employment sustained directly and indirectly by exports based on an export-heterogeneous input-output table. In this table, manufacturing industries are disaggregated according to the exporter status of firms in order to account for within-industry differences in input structures. According to our results, export-sustained employment in Belgium amounted to 1.32 million jobs in 2010, which corresponds to 29.5 % of total employment.
Working Papers - Working Paper 11-19 (fr),
This paper describes the methodology to make the existing interregional supply and use table (ISUT) of 2010 compatible to ESA2010/SNA2008 rules and shows the results at a macro level. The ISUT describes, for each product and industry, all intra- and interregional flows caused by the intermediate use, final consumption expenditures, investments and exports of the three Belgian regions Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia.
Working Papers - Working Paper 10-19 (en),
This paper seeks to quantify the cost of the most important inefficiencies in Belgian transport taxation. To this end we calculate the welfare gain of an ideal, optimal tax/subsidy system across the transport market as a whole (i.e. considering private road traffic in conjunction with public transport). We found the total welfare gain to be 2.3 billion euros, of which 1.3 billion are due to time gains of remaining road users. Our measure lies significantly above those found in the literature, since we consider the distortion cause by a wide range of subsidies.
Working Papers - Working Paper 09-19 (en), (fr), (nl),
This Working Paper examines which socioeconomic household characteristics determine greenhouse gas emissions in Belgium. The analysis is based on the PEACH2AIR database, which links the air pollution data with consumption expenditure of Belgian households as recorded in the 2014 Household Budget Survey.
Working Papers - Working Paper 08-19 (en), (fr), (nl),
This Working Paper identifies the characteristics that explain severe material deprivation in Belgium, while making a distinction between people aged below 65 and those aged 65 or above. Severe material deprivation has decreased for both groups. Young people are more impacted than the elderly. Although there is a clear link between income and deprivation, the overlap between individuals identified as at risk of poverty and those as severely deprived is far from perfect. The correlation between income poverty and deprivation is weaker for the old group than for the young.
Working Papers - Working Paper 07-19 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 06-19 (fr), (nl),
This Working Paper analyses the competitive position of the pharmaceutical industry over the 2000-2017 period. The evolution of price/cost competitiveness and non-cost competitiveness is studied based on a comparison with our neighbouring countries France, the Netherlands and Germany, and with Denmark, Ireland, Slovenia and Switzerland. The study also analyses a series of global factors and factors specific to the pharmaceutical industry that may influence competitiveness.
Working Papers - Working Paper 05-19 (fr),
Belgium has committed to raise investment in research and development (R&D) to 3% of GDP by 2020. In fulfilment of this commitment, the federal government introduced different tax incentives in support of business R&D. This paper presents the results of the third evaluation of the efficiency of these tax incentives, covering the period 2003-2015.
Working Papers - Working Paper 04-19 (en),
The Federal Planning Bureau has developed within the Nowcasting project a dynamic microsimulation model for nowcasting and medium-term forecasts (currently up to 2020) of indicators of poverty and social exclusion. Key messages of this project are that nowcasting and medium-term forecasting are now possible using a fully dynamic microsimulation model. The provisional results of the model suggest that the overall poverty risk would remain stable, but that of the 65+ subpopulation would decrease over time, while that of the younger population would show a small increase. Furthermore, the increase of overall ine-quality would come to a halt and the level of inequality would become more stable. Finally, the very low work intensity rate would continue its decrease, driven by the continuing increase of the employment rate among the working-age population.
Working Papers - Working Paper 03-19 (en),
Federal Planning Bureau
