Alexandre Lamfalussy has been highly influential in the process of European monetary and financial unification. In this paper we will analyse the work of the "Young Lamfalussy" (from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s). Lamfalussy started his career as an academic, focusing on growth theory and...

The paper describes job flows in Belgium using micro data at the firm level collected through the annual social balance sheets that companies have to file with the National Bank of Belgium. The coverage of the study is very broad: all industries and commercial services are included. We...

This paper provides a survey of the main developments in the iron and steel industry over the last few decades. The first chapter covers the changing conditions on international markets and identifies the main challenges facing the companies in this sector. These include the boom in China, the...

Using firm-level data for Belgium over the period 1997-2005, we evaluate the elasticity of firms' labour and real average labour compensation to microeconomic total factor productivity (TFP). Our results may be summarised as follows. First, we find that the elasticity of average labour...

This paper examines whether differences in wage rigidity across sectors can be explained by differences in workforce composition, competition, technology and wage-bargaining institutions. We adopt the measure of downward real wage rigidity (DRWR) developed by Dickens and Goette (2006) and rely...

In many European countries, the majority of workers have their wage rates determined directly by industry-level agreements. For some workers, industry agreements are supplemented by firm-specific agreements. Yet, the relative importance of individual company and industry agreements (in other...

This paper is a publication issued by the Microeconomic Analysis service of the National Bank of Belgium. This is the outcome of a first research project on the Belgian transport logistics sectors. In the past few years, the logistics business has turned out to play a significant part in wealth...

This paper decomposes wage bill changes at the firm level into components due to wage changes, and components due to net flows of employment. The analysis relies on an administrative employer-employee dataset of individual annual earnings matched with firms' annual accounts for Belgium over the...

This paper studies the relevance of strategic trade effects in the environmental policy for the European electricity sector. The production, investment and trade of electricity are modelled for four European countries. Three market regimes are distinguished: perfect competition, price regulation...

This paper evaluates the causal effects of exports to different destination countries using a comprehensive dataset on Belgian manufacturing firms from 1998 to 2005. Initial evidence suggests that, before export market entry, exporters to more developed economies have superior productivity...