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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.
This study discusses the possible effects of the Football World Cup in 2018 on economic expenditures. These expenditures mainly concern investments in stadiums and tourist spending by visitors. However, visiting teams, the media and organisational and security spending also generate effects. Total expenditure is estimated at €1.15 billion, spread over an eight - year period, with a large confidence interval. The effects of those expenditures on economic activity were calculated using two economic models: an input - output model and the macroeconomic model, HERMES . The effect on GDP should amount to approximately 0.13% in 2018. Employment should increase by roughly 450 to 750 jobs during the run - up to the tournament and by an equivalent of 4 000 to 8 000 man - years in the course of the tournament itself.
Working Papers - Working Paper 08-10 (en), (mix),
Working Papers - Working Paper 06-10 (fr),
Working Papers - Working Paper 05-10 (nl),
Working Papers - Working Paper 04-10 (fr), (nl),
The aim of this paper is to describe product market competition in the Belgian economy for the period 1997-2004 and to illustrate some causality with market regulation. The analysis is held at the industry level, for selected manufacturing and services industries. Emphasis is given to the profit elasticity (PE) measurement of competition (the "Boone" indicator) and the average profitability (AP) indicator (an approximation of the mark-up indicator). We applied the OECD Regimpact indicator as a proxy for regulation. We present some stylized facts, for Belgium in comparison with selected EU countries; and through an econometric exercise we illustrate the potential of regulation as an explanatory variable for competition.
Working Papers - Working Paper 03-10 (en),
The vehicle stock module calculates the size and composition of the car stock. Its output is a full description of the car stock in every year, by vehicle type, age and (emission) technology of the vehicle. The vehicle stock is represented in the detail needed to compute transport emissions. The integration of the car stock module in PLANET will allow to better capture the impact of changes in fixed and variable taxes levied on cars. Among these impacts, the effect on the environment is of particular interest.
Working Papers - Working Paper 02-10 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 01-10 (fr),
Working Papers - Working Paper 18-09 (mix),
Working Papers - Working Paper 17-09 (fr), (nl),
In December 2008, the European Union adopted an integrated Energy/Climate package which steps up the Union’s energy and climate policy ambitions to a new level and outlines how the effort will be shared among the Member States. This paper underlines the benefits of the EU Energy/Climate package in terms of energy supply security for Belgium, and more specifically the positive impacts the twin target – greenhouse gas emissions reduction and development of renewable energy sources – has on our dependence on fossil fuels. More specifically, the paper shows that substitutions in favour of renewables and a decrease in energy demand including the demand for electricity, which are the key responses of the Belgian energy system to the Energy/Climate package, not only allow to keep a balanced fuel mix in power generation in 2020 but also lead to reduced overall fossil fuel imports relative to baseline projections. They also water down the trend towards an increased dependency on natural gas imports. Net imports of fossil fuels decrease by 9% in 2020 compared to baseline trends. Compared to the year 2005, they increase only slightly by 3%. The growth of natural gas imports is limited to 11% over the same period, against +21% in the baseline.
Working Papers - Working Paper 16-09 (en),
The transport satellite accounts (TSA) show the total transport expenditure in Belgium in 2000. The TSA are a complement to the information in the national accounts for transport activities, which are only partially described in this general framework. Transport generates externalities that are not taken into account in the total expenditure as defined in the satellite accounts. The study assesses the external costs of various transport modes and contains a joint analysis of the externalities and of the main TSA results for 2000. The analysis reveals the extent of the transport costs and externalities, especially of road transport. The estimated external costs concern air pollution, climate change, accidents, noise and congestion.
Working Papers - Working Paper 15-09 (fr),
New measures need to be taken in order to reduce the negative impact of transport. This study presents various theoretical schemes for the introduction of road pricing in Belgium and analyses their impact on transport, the environment and welfare by using the PLANET model. The internalisation of external costs, while difficult to implement in the short term, improves welfare significantly. In order to improve welfare, a road tax system aimed at lorries exclusively should allow for a suitable differentiation according to the actual periods of transport. Extending the road pricing system so as to include vans has a positive effect on welfare and also avoids shifting part of the road freight to vans. Extending road pricing to all road motor vehicles (lorries, vans and individual cars) significantly improves welfare, road congestion and the average speed on the road network. On the other hand, it induces a very marked surge in the demand for rail and other public transport (buses, trams and metros), which would almost certainly exceed the capacity of existing infrastructures. Potential management problems of rail and other public transport such as buses, trams and metros could be avoided if the generalisation of the road pricing system to all road motor vehicles were combined with the withdrawal of subsidies for public transport.
Working Papers - Working Paper 14-09 (fr),
The present paper computes cumulative employment generated by the Belgian environmental industry. Relying on Belgian input-output tables for the year 2000 and on detailed employment data (SAM sub-matrix), we investigate the patterns of the employment in the environmental industry, by considering the worker types differentiated by gender, educational attainment or a combination of these characteristics. The employment multiplier analysis of environmental employment reveals some interesting differences between employment of the overall economy and environmental employment for the level of education as well as for the gender type.
Working Papers - Working Paper 13-09 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 12-09 (fr),
This study is devoted to the analysis of the main effects, on the Belgian economy, of various forms of tax shifting aimed at increasing taxes on energy and decreasing other taxes (mainly taxes on labour). Results show that, if the increase in energy taxes is combined with a reduction of taxes on labour, a double dividend (rise in employment and decrease in energy consumption and CO2 emissions) can be obtained.
Working Papers - Working Paper 11-09 (fr),
The concepts of potential growth and output gap are important tools to evaluate the state of the business cycle and to assess the supply-side capacity of an economy. They have also become an essential ingredient of the European fiscal surveillance process. However, the global economy is facing its most widespread crisis in the post-war era and consequently the uncertainty regarding the impact of the crisis on supply-side conditions is enormous. In this Working Paper we compare revisions on potential growth for Belgium made recently by the Federal Planning Bureau and international organizations. Those comparisons aim at highlighting the uncertainty associated with those revisions as well as understanding better some of the channels through which the crisis may reduce potential output.
Working Papers - Working Paper 10-09 (fr),
This paper investigates graphically and econometrically the relationship between the relative positions, in terms of value added and relative prices, of Belgian manufacturing and market services in the European Union over 1970-2005. Relative prices are then decomposed into relative unit costs of factors of production. The analysis goes further by replacing relative unit labour cost with relative hourly wages and relative productivity. Finally, relative produc-tivity is replaced with relative capital deepening, relative labour composition effect and relative total factor productivity. All data are coming from the EUKLEMS database, March 2008 release.
Working Papers - Working Paper 09-09 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 08-09 (nl),
This study presents an overview of the evolution of the size, the composition and the economic importance of the environment industry in Belgium between 1995 and 2005. It shows which industries are involved and which environmental domains are most important.
Working Papers - Working Paper 07-09 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 06-09 (nl),
Working Papers - Working Paper 05-09 (fr),
Working Papers - Working Paper 04-09 (fr),
Several legal missions from the Federal Planning Bureau require the construction of long-term macroeconomic scenarios for the Belgian economy. In order to increase the consistency of these scenarios and to build them within a rigorous theoretical framework, it appeared important to develop a new long-term model that considers economic growth as depending upon the supply of production factors.
The theoretical structure of the model draws on similar work done by the Dutch CPB. In the working paper we detail the construction, the properties and the estimation of the parameters based upon quarterly data from the Belgian national accounts. The model should contribute for instance to the production of long-term macro-economic scenarios to evaluate the budgetary cost of ageing.
Working Papers - Working Paper 03-09 (fr),
The Working Paper analyses the performances of the Walloon innovation system in 2008. This analysis concentrates on the six dimensions of the innovation system: knowledge development, human resources, R&D exploitation, innovation absorption capacity, entrepreneurial skills and financing capacity. These foundations are evaluated by comparing the performances of the Walloon innovation system with the performances of innovation systems of other countries and regions in Europe. They were chosen for their socio-economic proximity to the Walloon region. The examination of the Walloon innovation system reveals a problem that is essentially connected with the capacity to turn research and innovation efforts into economic results that are sufficient for the Region.
Working Papers - Working Paper 02-09 (fr),
The fear of massive job losses has prompted a fast-growing literature on offshoring and its impact on employment in advanced economies. This paper examines the situation for Belgium. The offshoring intensity is computed as a volume measure of the share of imported intermediate inputs in output based on a series of constant price supply-and-use tables for the period 1995-2003. Both materials and business services offshoring to high-wage and low-wage countries are addressed. The split-up according to the origin of the imported intermediates is done combining detailed trade data with data from the use table. The main findings are that materials offshoring stands at a higher level than business services offshoring, but that the latter grows much faster especially for the Central and Eastern European countries. Estimations of static and dynamic industry-level labour demand equations augmented by offshoring intensities do not reveal a significant impact of either materials or business services offshoring on total employment for Belgium between 1995 and 2003. However, this does not preclude a differential impact by skill-level.
Working Papers - Working Paper 01-09 (en),
Federal Planning Bureau
