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Dans un souci de transparence et d’information, le BFP publie régulièrement les méthodes et résultats de ses travaux. Les publications sont organisées en séries, entre autres, les perspectives, les working papers et planning papers. Certains rapports peuvent également être consultés ici, de même que les bulletins du Short Term Update publiés jusqu’en 2015. Une recherche par thématique, type de publication, auteur et année vous est proposée.
In the health economics literature, it is customary to model total (private and public) aggregate health expenditures as a function of income, demographic ageing and a host of other variables. Private health expenditures are rarely modelled separately and if they are, the models are often based on individual data and limited to specific medical services such as physician visits. In this paper we specify a model of aggregate private health expenditures, embedded in a generalisation of Deaton & Muellbauer’s Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS). The main advantage of specifying a complete demand system is that all household consumption decisions, including the ones about the use of health care services, are subject to the same budget restriction.
Articles - Article 2008030701
The Generation Pact and, before that, the Councils of ministers held in Gembloux and Ostend, have led to adjustments in the pension scheme for self-employed workers: an increase in the minimum pension, welfare adjustments (including the “welfare bonus”), a pension bonus and adjustment of pension penalties (“malus”). The MoSES model as used to estimate the budgetary cost of these reforms and to assess their impact on the average pension benefit for the self-employed. The Working Paper first gives a general survey of the model and its new functionalities (some of which have been specially developed in order to model the new measures) and presents the results of the simulations.
Articles - Article 2007121004
This paper introduces the notion of qualitative employment multipliers. For each final demand product, a set of employment multipliers was computed. Each of these gives the use of an employment type characterised by gender, age class, professional status, education level or labour regime. The paper describes a method for compiling qualitative employment multipliers and shows results based on disaggregated employment and input output data for 2000 and 2002.
Articles - Article 2007121003
Every three years, the Federal Planning Bureau releases a publication on the long-term energy projections for Belgium, based on the energy model PRIMES. This Planning Paper is the third in the series and puts the emphasis on the link with climate change. Amongst other things, a baseline and a selection of emission reduction scenarios for the period after 2012 are described.
Articles - Article 2007121002
The publication of the fourth Federal Report on sustainable development implements the Belgian Act of 5 May 1997 on the Coordination of Federal Sustainable Development Policy. This Act institutes a strategic process of reporting, planning, implementation and monitoring in order to introduce these policies in Belgium at the federal level. This report proposes two long term (2050) sustainable development scenarios and assesses the existing situation, including the current policy on sustainable development.
Articles - Article 2007121001
To improve our understanding of the divergent evolutions that recently emerged between European countries in terms of labour productivity, this working paper compares the labour productivity growth of three small open European countries: Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. The analysis focuses on market services as they are the most important single factor that is responsible for the divergences.
Articles - Article 2007100507
If unemployment benefits are indexed to gross wages and the replacement rate between unemployment benefits and net wages affects the wage rate, then cutting taxes falling on the supply of labour (personal income taxes or employees' social-security contributions) increases employment more than reducing taxes falling on the demand for labour (employers' social-security contributions).
Articles - Article 2007100506
The distinction between the young and the elderly within low- and high-wage earning employment in HERMES, the FPB's medium-term macroeconomic model, enables the assessment of both age- and wage-related labour cost reduction policies.
Articles - Article 2007100505
Every three years, each EU Member State is required to set out its political priorities related to economic growth and job creation in a so-called National Reform Programme (NRP). The 2005-2008 programme prepared by the Belgian authorities proposes six lines of action for boosting growth and employment. For each of these lines of action, one or two quantitative objectives have been set out. In this working paper we compare the main macroeconomic objectives contained in the Belgian NRP with the results of the latest medium-term economic outlook produced by the Federal Planning Bureau. This no-policy-change scenario also serves as a baseline for analysing the effects on the main macroeconomic objectives of the government of a further reduction in social security contributions in order to ease the tax wedge on labour as foreseen in the NRP.
Articles - Article 2007100504
This working paper gives an overview of recent research aimed at refining forecasts and analysis of Belgian foreign trade. Regarding export markets, a new leading indicator is introduced as an additional tool for assessing the growth profile for Belgium's potential export markets in the first quarters to be forecast. With respect to exports, an analysis is made concerning the considerable and partly unexplained loss of export market share in recent years. It appears that (a lack of) competitiveness plays an important role in the evolution of Belgium's export market share, but it cannot explain it entirely.
Articles - Article 2007100503
In 2004, the Federal Planning Bureau has published two reports on long-term energy projections. They describe long-term energy projections for Belgium, but do not provide results on the level of the three Belgian regions (Flemish, Walloon and Brussels Capital). Since some major responsibilities in the field of energy have been regionalised, an insight into regional energy projections seems to be indispensable. The regions not only have to prepare an energy policy plan for the short term, but also have to come up with an energy plan that overlooks a more elaborate time horizon. At the request of theregions, the Federal Planning Bureau therefore embarked on a regionalisation of the energy scenarios described in the two cited reports, the results of which can be found in two working papers: one describing the results for the Flemish Region, the other the Region of Brussels Capital.
Articles - Article 2007100502
The August 2007 issue of the NIME Outlook for the World Economy presents a 2007-2013 macroeconomic outlook for the major areas of the world. The outlook was produced using NIME, the Federal Planning Bureau's macroeconometric world model.
Articles - Article 2007100501
The economic outlook for the Belgian economy is published each year by the Federal Planning Bureau in spring and presented to the representatives of the social partners within the Central Economic Council. This baseline is a no-policy-change scenario, notably with regard to fiscal and social policies, that is based upon an international environment founded on projections prepared by international institutions. In this working paper past projection errors are scrutinised to give users a broad idea of the precision of the projections and also to identify possible methodological weaknesses that should be improved.
Articles - Article 2007051802
The present paper follows up on the longstanding tradition of analysing trends in relocation or offshoring at the Federal Planning Bureau. Replicating and extending a method developed by the OECD, it provides a rough estimate for Belgium of the proportion of service jobs at risk of being offshored in the wake of information and communication technology (ICT) developments, and compares the results for Belgium with results for the EU15 and the US. Occupational employment data from the Labour Force Survey are used to produce this estimate by identifying service jobs that could possibly be offshored due to ICT-enabled tradability.
Articles - Article 2007051801
This paper sheds light on several challenges related to the development of the energy system in Belgium up to 2050, taking into account constraints on the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) in a European context. It is based on two studies carried out by the Federal Planning Bureau in 2006 that deal with the related energy and climate change issues.
Articles - Article 2007030602
The NIME model is a macroeconometric world model developed by economists at the Belgian Federal Planning Bureau. The model is used to make medium-term projections for the international economy, as well as to study the transmission mechanisms of economic policies and exogenous shocks.
Articles - The NIME model of the World Economy
In 2005, the federal government presented the ‘Generation Pact’, containing a number of measures designed to strengthen the financial sustainability of the Belgian system of social security in the light of demographic ageing. One of these measures, the introduction of a pension bonus, is designed to encourage older workers to postpone retirement. This working paper discusses the effect of this bonus on the financial consequences of retirement simulated for four fictitious older workers, representing various types of workers.
Articles - Working Paper 11-06
The Lisbon Strategy has been launched by the European Council to promote long-term economic growth under the conditions of sufficient social and environmental protection. It builds on three pillars: the macroeconomic, the microeconomic and the labour market pillar. In this planning paper the microeconomic pillar and its implementation in Belgium is reviewed. The paper consists of four chapters, each covering a specific theme that concerns the microeconomic pillar.
Articles - Article 2006121801
The object of this article is to present the Belgian action plan on investing in knowledge and innovation and the main measures already taken as explained in the 2006 Belgian progress report to the National Reform Programme (www.be2010.eu). The FPB participates in the preparation of these reports.
Articles - Article 2006121803
This paper describes the operating mode of the two existing Belgian fiscal councils - the High Council of Finance and the National Accounts Institute - as well as their role in the budgetary planning process and emphasizes the part taken by the FPB in producing independent macroeconomic forecasts. In the context of the revised Stability and Growth Pact, lessons drawn from the Belgian experience can certainly be useful for other Member States willing to improve their fiscal institutional settings.
Articles - Working Paper 04-06
This paper presents the results of a micro simulation model designed to make short-term projections of poverty indicators. The unit of observation in the model is the household. In order to project the evolution of household incomes over time, we have specified a model that links the total observed household income to the evolution of a set of macro income indicators that reflect the different ‘micro’ sources of income.
Articles - Working Paper 05-06
In Belgium, as well as in other European countries, the use of R&D tax incentives has become more popular in recent years. It remains, however, important to evaluate the effectiveness of those new and existing measures.
Articles - Working Paper 06-06
In this paper, the tools and methods currently used at the FPB are classified in three groups: national models; international models; and other tools and methods. The listed FPB’s instruments are used to produce analyses and projections in a wide range of areas: business cycle analyses and short-term forecasting, macro-sectoral analyses and medium-term outlook, long-term projections and the issue of ageing, intersectoral relationships, international economics, labour market analyses, public finance, demographic analyses, transport economics, energy market analyses, environmental issues and sustainable development. This paper gives only a bird’s-eye view of the most important tools and methods. At the end of each instrument’s description, references to a short-list of technical papers, applications and to FPB contact addresses can be found.
Articles - Working Paper 07-06
Two Working Papers on the macroeconomic impact of network industry reform have been published. The first is a detailed report in Dutch, the second a summary paper in English. The analysis builds on a simulation by FPB’s macroeconometric model HERMES, and a simulation by IMF’s general equilibrium model GEM. Although both simulations were based on the same exogenous input, they gave significantly different outcomes. This sheds light on the applicability of different modelling approaches to an issue at hand.
Articles - Working Paper 08-06 / 10-06
This working paper analyses public financing in two countries that have already reached the Barcelona goal (R&D expenditure on GDP at least equal to 3%), Finland and Sweden, and compares it with the situation in Belgium. This comparison covers not only the quantitative aspects but also the organisational dimension of the public support for innovation.
Articles - Working Paper 09-06
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