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 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...

This Working Paper analyses the economic importance of the Belgian ports based largely on the annual accounts data for the year 2016. As the years prior to 2016 have been described in earlier papers in the same series, we mainly focus on the figures for 2016 and developments between 2015 and...

This Working Paper assesses the economic importance of the logistics sector in Belgium for the period 2010-2015 on the basis of the data from the annual accounts submitted to the NBB's Central Balance Sheet Office. The logistics sector was defined on the basis of the NACE-Bel nomenclature of...

This Working Paper analyses the economic importance of the Belgian ports largely based on annual accounts data for the year 2017. As the years prior to 2017 have been described in earlier papers in the same series, the emphasis lies on the figures for 2017 and the developments between 2016 and...

When the government issues long-term bonds, the optimal time-consistent fiscal and monetary policy is to consolidate debt in a liquidity trap by increasing taxes and by taming public spending. This prescription is at odds with large deficit-spending undertaken in the US during previous liquidity...

We propose a novel framework where forward guidance (FG) is endogenously determined. Our model assumes that a monetary authority solves an optimal policy problem under commitment at the zero-lower bound. FG derives from two sources: 1. from commiting to keep interest rates low at the exit of the...

This paper analyzes the direct and indirect effects of fiscal policy on total factor productivity (TFP) in a panel of OECD countries over the period 1970-2012. Our contribution is twofold. First, when estimating the impact of fiscal policy on TFP from a production function approach, we identify...

This paper employs fifteen dynamic macroeconomic models maintained within the European System of Central Banks to assess the size of fiscal multipliers in European countries. Using a set of common simulations, we consider transitory and permanent shocks to government expenditures and different...