Documents (86)

Long-term Sustainable Development Visions: Concepts, Applications, and Elaboration 29/10/2013

This Planning Paper explores the usefulness and the need for long-term visions of society's development to guide the achievement of a sustainable society. Such a future society is able to combine material wealth improvements with social equity and justice and to limit its environmental impact to a level within the Earth's self-recovery capabilities. Government initiatives already taken in several industrialized countries to help respond to this need are reviewed. This review covers different levels of governance, from the sub-national to the global level, with a particular focus on the Belgian Federal Sustainable Development (SD) strategy adopted in a Parliamentary Act of 1997. It analyses in particular the content and the follow-up of the 2010 revision of this Act, which has introduced a long-term vision for Sustainable Development in this strategy.

Artikels - Article 20130530  

Concurrentievermogen van België: uitdagingen en groeipistes 27/11/2012

Het Federaal Planbureau heeft in mei 2012 een tussentijds rapport over het concurrentievermogen van België opgesteld als antwoord op een verzoek van de Eerste Minister in het kader van de eerste fase van de opmaak van het relanceplan. Dit rapport maakte de balans op van het concurrentievermogen van België en informeerde de regering over de situatie van België ten opzichte van de drie buurlanden. De analyses werden voortgezet om de determinanten van het concurrentievermogen te achterhalen en bijgevolg ook de belangrijkste toekomstige uitdagingen om het concurrentievermogen te verbeteren. De huidige publicatie, die op 26 oktober 2012 werd afgerond, geeft een overzicht van die analyses. Ze werd meegedeeld aan de Eerste Minister en de minister van Economie als technische ondersteuning voor de tweede fase van het relanceplan in het kader van de opmaak van de begroting 2013.

Artikels - Article 20121127  

Regionale economische vooruitzichten 2012-2017 - Actualisering van september 2012 27/09/2012

Artikels - Article 20120927  

De Belgische economie zou met 0,5% groeien in 2012 en met 1,3% in 2013 14/06/2012

Het Federaal Planbureau heeft zijn vooruitzichten 2012-2013 voor de Belgische economie herzien. Deze vooruitzichten zullen in september 2012 geactualiseerd worden in het kader van de economische begroting, die als basis gebruikt wordt voor de voorbereiding van de federale begroting van 2013.

Artikels - Article 20120614  

Twenty years of political commitment to sustainable development? 16/12/2011

The Federal Report on Sustainable Development 2011 has been published to implement the Belgian Act of 5 May 1997 on the Coordination of Federal Sustainable Development Policy. It is the sixth sustainable development report and the first since the 2010 revision of the act. That revision stipulates that a report has to be drawn up during each five-year cycle of the act and that it consists of a status and evaluation part and a foresight part. The 2011 report presents the status and evaluation part. It examines three aspects: sustainable development trends for the past twenty years based on indicators, the Belgian federal sustainable development strategy for 1997-2010, and a series of policy measures selected from the Federal Plan for Sustainable Development

Artikels - Article 20120321  

Herziening van het Belgisch federalisme en budgettaire houdbaarheid : belangrijke implicaties 24/03/2011

In België heeft de crisis, net zoals in andere landen, het risico doen toenemen dat de houdbaarheid van de overheidsfinanciën in het gedrang komt[1]: de stijging van het structureel tekort, de toename van de schuld en de aanzienlijke kosten van de vergrijzing maken een beleid dat de houdbaarheid van de overheidsfinanciën herstelt noodzakelijk. In deze studie onderzoekt het FPB de mogelijke gevolgen van de herziening van het Belgisch budgettair federalisme[2], die nu op tafel ligt, voor het opzetten van een dergelijk beleid.

[1]Onhoudbaarheid van de overheidsfinanciën: situatie waarin, in afwezigheid van budgettaire saneringen of hervormingen, de publieke schuldgraad in de toekomst buitensporig dreigt toe te nemen.

[2]Budgettair federalisme: verdeling van de budgettaire en fiscale bevoegdheden en de financiële middelen tussen de verschillende beleidsniveaus.

Artikels - Article 20110324  

A macro-econometric model for the economy of Lesotho 03/11/2010

The Federal Planning Bureau took part, in collaboration with the German institute DIW Berlin, in a technical assistance project financed by the European Commission aimed at developing different modelling approaches for the economy of Lesotho, a small country landlocked within the territory of South Africa. In the context of this project a macro-econometric model was elaborated. This Working Paper describes the main characteristics and the behavioural equations of this model and discusses a baseline simulation and an alternative scenario aimed at reducing up to 2012 the expected public deficit.

Artikels - Article 2010110301  

Understanding wage determination in a multi-level bargaining system 21/12/2009

This study attempts to measure the impact of industry-level wage bargaining on individual wages in Belgium. The results indicate that industry wage bargaining increases decided collectively at the industry level are, on average, fully passed on to actual wages. Moreover, industry wage bargaining seems to coexist along with a wage drift affected by company size, the economic performance of the industry and labour market tensions.

Artikels - Article 2009122103  

Economic impacts of tax-shifting operations 21/12/2009

This study is devoted to the analysis of the main effects on the Belgian economy, for the period 2010-2020, of various forms of tax-shifting aimed at increasing taxes on energy and, simultaneously, decreasing other forms of taxation. All these variants have been simulated using the FPB’s medium-term model for Belgian  economy (HERMES).

Artikels - Article 2009122102  

The economic impact of the Services directive 21/12/2009

By the end of 2009, all Member States of the EU must have transposed the Services directive into national law. This will constitute a major step forward in the completion of the legal framework for the internal market, but its economic impact is expected to be relatively small. It may lead to double-digit export growth for certain services branches. The small scale of these exports, however, gives rise to a weak impact on turnover, value added and employment.

Artikels - Article 2009122101  

Impact of the financial crisis on Belgian potential output 06/10/2009

The concepts of potential growth and the output gap are important tools, respectively, for assessing the supply- side capacity of an economy and evaluating the state of the business cycle. They have also become an essential ingredient of the European fiscal surveillance process. In this Working Paper we compare, in the context of the financial crisis, revisions of potential output 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 having a better  understanding of some of the channels through which the crisis may reduce potential output.

Artikels - Article 2009100606  

Alternative assessment of Belgian competitiveness 06/10/2009

This paper investigates 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 broken down into relative unit costs of production factors. The analysis goes further by decomposing relative unit labour cost into relative hourly wages and relative productivity. Finally, relative productivity is broken down into relative capital deepening, relative labour
composition effect and relative total factor productivity.

Artikels - Article 2009100605  

Transport emissions – Historic evolution and outlook 06/10/2009

Transport is a major source of greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions and plays an important role in their  evolution. Transport emissions are closely monitored and their future evolution is integrated into the FPB transport model, PLANET. The publication uses a decomposition analysis to compare the projected evolution of the emissions in the base scenario of the PLANET model to the base scenario of two other models and to put these in a historic perspective. The analysis focuses on Tank-to-Wheel emissions and is limited to three modes: road transport, railways and inland navigation.

Artikels - Article 2009100604  

The Belgian environment industry (1995-2005) 06/10/2009

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the economic potential of environmental protection activities. The protection of the environment necessitates the development, production and marketing of a host of environmentally friendly products and production processes, the development of the skills needed to use them, environmental legislation, an administration to keep track of these developments, etc. All these activities are provided for by the environment industry. This study investigates the development of the environment industry in Belgium between 1995 and 2005.

Artikels - Article 2009100603  

Sustainable development indicators, objectives and visions 06/10/2009

The publication of the fifth Federal Report on sustainable development implements the Belgian Act of 5 May 1997 on the Coordination of Federal Sustainable Development Policy. This Report contributes to the debate on the role and choice of indicators and objectives for measuring the development of a country and for the implementation of that strategic process. It studies a set of sustainable development indicators (SDI) that shows to what extent living conditions in Belgium are heading towards sustainable development strategic objectives (SDSO). The Report also studies these strategic objectives in the context of long term visions of society.

Artikels - Article 2009100602  

Measuring development progress beyond GDP 06/10/2009

This special topic article describes three kinds of synthetic indicators complementing GDP: the Human Development Index, the Ecological Footprint with Biocapacity and, third, indicators based on Environmental Satellite Accounts. It shows that these indicators, among others, provide useful additional information on the human and environmental resource bases of development.

Artikels - Article 2009100601  

Assessing adequacy of pensions 02/03/2009

In the context of the European-funded sixth framework project, "Adequacy of Old-Age Income Maintenance in the EU (AIM)", a dynamic microsimulation model has been developed for Belgium, Germany and Italy. This model, called MIDAS, simulates future developments in the adequacy of pensions in Belgium, Italy and Germany, following wherever possible the projections and assumptions of the Ageing Working Group.

Artikels - Article 2009030205  

Impact of the EU Energy and Climate Package on the Belgian energy system and economy 02/03/2009

In order to prepare for the negotiations on the EU Energy and Climate Package (E/C Package), the Federal Planning Bureau was asked by the Belgian federal and regional authorities to conduct a study on the impact of the European Commission's proposal of January 2008. In the course of the study, various scenarios and sensitivity analyses were run. Next to a baseline, two main alternative scenarios were scrutinized: the 20/20 and 30/20 target scenarios, standing for an EU reduction of, respectively, 20% and 30% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the year 2020 compared to the level of 1990, and a mandatory 20% EU-wide share for renewable energy sources (RES) in Gross Final Energy Demand in 2020. The report then includes an analysis of the impact of both scenarios on the Belgian energy system and economy as well as on GHG emissions.

Artikels - Article 2009030204  

The impact of offshoring on employment in Belgium 02/03/2009

Worries about massive job losses have 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 the share of imported intermediate inputs in output, based on a series of constant price supply- and-use tables for 1995-2003. 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, but this does not preclude a differential impact by skill-level.

Artikels - Article 2009030203  

System of Innovation in Wallonia 02/03/2009

This Working Paper evaluates the performance of the system of innovation in Wallonia for the most recent available period. Like the previous paper, this paper is based on the analysis of indicators reflecting the six main components of a system of innovation: knowledge development, human resources, valorisation of R&D, absorption capacity of innovation, entrepreneurship and innovation financing. A country's performance depends not only on the relative strength of each individual element but also on how effectively the components interact. These six components are evaluated from a European perspective: Wallonia is compared with European countries and European regions with similar socio-economic characteristics.

Artikels - Article 2009030202  

Long term transport projections for Belgium 02/03/2009

An efficient transport system is essential for the economic development of Belgium. Today it is clear that transport not only contributes positively to welfare, but also causes negative effects. Witness to this are the many traffic jams on the roads and the problems caused by air pollution. By sketching an image of what the future might bring, this Planning Paper aims to present elements that can support the formulation of transport policies. The time horizon of the study is 2030.

Artikels - Article 2009030201  

Transitie naar een duurzame ontwikkeling tegen 2050: vier Working Papers bij het vierde Federaal rapport 21/10/2008

Het Federaal Planbureau (FPB) publiceerde vier Working Papers (WP's) bij De transitie naar een duurzame ontwikkeling versnellen, het Federaal rapport inzake duurzame ontwikkeling 2007. Drie van die WP's documenteren de voorbereiding van het toekomstverkennende deel van het rapport. De vierde WP presenteert een samenvatting van dat deel van het rapport.

Artikels - Article 2008102101  

Elaboration of a regional projection model. A first application of the HERMREG model to the national economic outlook 2007-2012 07/03/2008

In January 2008, the results of an initial exercise aimed at breaking down the national economic projections for the period 2007-2012 into regional projections were published. This study is the result of a collaboration between the Federal Planning Bureau, the Brussels Institute for Analysis and Statistics (IBSA), the Research Centre of the Flemish Government (SVR) and the Walloon Institute for Evaluation, Prospects and Statistics (IWEPS).

Artikels - Article 2008030704  

Recent evolution of the welfare adjustment of social security benefits 07/03/2008

Social benefits are adjusted according to increases in the level of prices and are also adjusted – rather irregularly – to the general evolution of welfare. These welfare adjustments can apply to various elements of social legislation or parameters of social policy: the benefit amount, the ceilings used to calculate the benefits, etc. The Act of 23 December 2005 providing for a Solidarity Pact between the Generations establishes a structural mechanism of welfare adjustment for social benefits. The Working Paper analyses the main characteristics of the mechanism and the details of its implementation. It assesses the budgetary effects of the measures that have been taken within this framework and compares the benefit adjustments that have been carried out over recent years with wage growth. Finally, two alternative scenarios of benefit adjustment policy are examined.

Artikels - Article 2008030703  

Budget surpluses to face population ageing: the reality and the prospects 07/03/2008

The Working Paper looks at the strategy that has been implemented in Belgium since the beginning of the decade to finance the future increase in public spending due to population ageing. This strategy is laid down in the Stability Programmes and in the Ageing Act and is supported by a broad social and political consensus. It implies building up budget surpluses, which has not been done so far. The paper analyses the long-term effects of such a situation, for example as regards the trade-off between the various policies that could be implemented to face the budgetary challenges posed by ageing populations.

Artikels - Article 2008030702