This paper aims to extract the common variation in a data set of 509 conjunctural series as an indication of the Belgian business cycle. The data set contains information on business and consumer surveys of Belgium and its neighbouring countries, macroeconomic variables and some worldwide...

This paper documents the patterns and determinants of price setting in the Belgian industry. We analyse the micro data underlying the Producer Price Index (PPI) over the period from February 2001 to January 2005. On average only one out of four prices changes in a typical month, whereas the...

How should we value and manage deposit accounts where deposits have a zero contractual maturity, but which, in practice, remain stable through time and are remunerated below market rates? Does the economic value of the deposit account differ from the face value and can we reliably measure it? To...

We test whether firms with a single bank are better shielded from loss of credit and investment cuts in periods of adverse cash flow shocks than firms with multiple bank relationships. Our estimates of the cash flow sensitivity of investment show that both types of firms are equally subject to...

Whilst overall productivity growth is stalling, firms at the frontier are still able to capture the benefits of the newest technologies and business practices. This paper uses linked employer-employee data covering all Belgian firms over a period of almost 20 years and investigates the...

In 2020, Belgian ports generated € 31.8 billion in direct and indirect value added (7% of Belgian GDP) and employed 254 611 full-time equivalents (FTEs) either directly or indirectly (5.9% of Belgian domestic employment including the self-employed). Despite the COVID-19 outbreak, direct...

The main purpose of this Working Paper is providing an overview of the economic importance of the Flemish maritime ports, the Liège port complex and the port of Brussels over the period 2014-2019 in terms of value added, employment and investment based on annual account figures. In 2019,...

This paper investigates the potentially non-linear relation between households' indebtedness and their consumption between 2010 and 2014 in Belgium. To do so, we use panel data from the two waves of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey. Unlike previous studies, we find a negative effect...

This Working Paper provides an extensive overview of the economic importance and development of the Flemish maritime ports, the Liège port complex and the port of Brussels for the period 2013 - 2018 in terms of value added, employment and investment. Each of these ports play a major role in...

The decision to serve foreign markets through exports or foreign direct investment (FDI) has been studied within proximity-concentration models of location, mainly in the context of trade in goods. This paper adapts these models to account for the specific nature of services that are traded...