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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.
Other publications - FORVERG201301 (fr), (nl),
Forecasts & Outlook - EFPOP2013 (fr), (nl),
Forecasts & Outlook - Economic outlook 2013-2018 (fr), (nl),
Speeches & presentations - SP130425_01 (fr),
Working Papers - Working Paper 03-13 (mix),
In July 2012, the federal government announced its economic stimulus strategy. The key objectives of the strategy include supporting the purchasing power of households, enhancing the economy’s competitiveness and creating more high-quality jobs.
The stimulus strategy introduced a follow-up and monitoring procedure which commissions the Federal Planning Bureau to report the government every six months on the procedure’s evolution and the efficiency of the measures taken in view of the strategy’s objectives. This first monitoring report presents the monitoring procedure, gives an overview of the measures to follow up (the scope) and reviews the progress of implementation of the measures (situation on 31 January 2013).
Reports - OPREP201301 (fr), (nl),
While rising health care expenditures as a percentage of national income is a well-known and widely documented feature across the industrialized world, it has proved difficult to quantify the effects of the underlying cost drivers. The main difficulty is to find suitable proxies to measure medical technological innovation, which is believed to be a major determinant of steadily increasing health spending. This paper’s main contribution is the use of data on approved medical devices and drugs to proxy for medical technological progress. The effects of these variables on total real per capita health spending are estimated using a panel model for 18 OECD countries covering the period 1981-2009. The results confirm the substantial cost-increasing effect of medical technology, which may account for at least 50% of the explained historical growth of spending. Excluding the approval variables causes a significant upward bias of the estimated income elasticity of health spending and negatively affects some model specification tests. Despite the overall net positive effect of technology, the effect of two subgroups of approvals on expenditure is significantly negative. These subgroups can be thought of as representing ‘incremental medical innovation’, while the positive effects are related to radically innovative pharmaceutical products and devices. The results are consistent with those reported in other studies which suggest that some new products, despite their high price when they are introduced, can ultimately save money by reducing spending on other medical interventions.
Working Papers - Working Paper 02-13 (en),
Speeches & presentations - SP121023_01 (fr),
Other publications - FORVERG201201 (fr), (nl),
Speeches & presentations - SP120614_01 (fr),
Other publications - OPVERG201201 (fr), (fr), (nl), (nl),
Forecasts & Outlook - Economic outlook 2012-2017 (fr), (nl),
Speeches & presentations - SP120504_01 (nl),
Speeches & presentations - SP120308_01 (nl),
The Federal Planning Bureau has a long tradition in providing long-term projections focused on the evolution of social expenditure within an overall framework of public finance, using the MALTESE system of models. This outlook is based on different scenarios: demographic, socio-economic, macroeconomic and welfare adjustment. The purpose of this publication is to describe the methodology for the construction of the socio-economic and macroeconomic scenarios and to illustrate it by presenting the main results from the 2011 projection for the Annual Report of the Study Group on Ageing.
Working Papers - Working Paper 05-12 (en),
Forecasts & Outlook - EFPOP2011 (fr), (nl),
Other publications - OPVERG201101 (fr), (nl),
Forecasts & Outlook - Economic outlook 2011-2016 (fr), (nl),
Other publications - OPBFPBNB_11_01 (fr), (nl),
Reports - RIS_LAS_2001_01 (fr), (nl),
Articles - Article 20110324
One of the main sections in the current draft of the 2011-2012 Interprofessional Agreement concerns the welfare adjustment of social benefits. This draft results from a long process and fits in with the law concerning the Solidarity Pact between the Generations, which established a structural mechanism at the end of 2005, linking social benefits to welfare evolution. This working paper ‘Welfare adjustment of social benefits’ describes the first stage of that process: estimating the disposable financial means for the welfare adjustment of social benefits for the period 2011-2012, to which the Federal Planning Bureau contributed. In the employees scheme these means amount to 233.8 million in 2011 and to 497.9 million in 2012, of which the draft of the Interprofessional Agreement proposes to utilize merely 60%. Furthermore, this paper offers an overview of Belgian social policy by portraying its main turning points on the one hand and analysing the evolution of the average amounts of the main social benefits since 1980 on the other. The outcome is marked with contrast: over the period 1980-2009 the relative standard of living globally improved for pensioners, as opposed to the unemployed and the disabled.
Working Papers - Working Paper 04-11 (mix),
Working Papers - Working Paper 22-10 (mix),
Working Papers - Working Paper 23-10 (fr), (nl),
Other publications - OPVERG201001 (fr), (nl),
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