This paper analyses Belgian fiscal sustainability using both a retrospective and a prospective view. In the retrospective part, empirical tests on Belgian government solvency during the period 1980-2010 are carried out. In the prospective part a scenario analysis of budgetary adjustment in the...

This paper analyzes the impact of agglomeration economies on firm level performance measured by total factor productivity for Slovenia. To estimate total factor productivity, we use a control function approach to capture endogenous input choices and self selection. In contrast to most of the...

This paper documents that a large fraction of trade flows at the firm level consists of simultaneous imports and exports in identical products, narrowly defined at the 8-digit product classification, which we call Pass-On Trade, POT. We use data on imports and exports at the firm–product level...

This paper uses firm level data to analyze the regional competitiveness of two federal Euro area countries, Belgium and Germany. Competitiveness is defined as the labor cost per unit of output and hence takes into account productivity differences. Analyzing regional competitiveness is important...

Unemployment rates are significantly different across regions in Belgium. In the search for an explanation for this fact, we simultaneously estimate a wage and labor productivity equations where we include regional dummies as explanatory variables. We find that the wage-productivity gap reached...

This paper analyzes employment growth in Belgian multinational enterprises’ headquarters relative to their affiliates. We find that headquarters have on average 2.5% more employment growth than their affiliates. When they go through restructuring headquarters reduce employment by 4.4% less...