The need to revive Euro area growth highlights the importance of the evolution of domestic and external demand in the core. This paper puts recent demand patterns in France, Germany, and Belgium into historical perspective. We find that, first, dynamics for private consumption, non-residential...

The 2009 Article IV Consultation highlights that the near-term outlook for Belgium is challenging, with real GDP expected to drop by about 3 percent in 2009 and a gradual recovery projected for 2010. The unemployment rate will continue to rise in 2010, and inflation pressures are expected to...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes the challenge of population aging for Belgium. It argues that the aging strategy should be broadened to include more explicitly the objective of raising employment rates to foster potential growth. The paper discusses assumptions underlying the official aging...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes the regional labor markets for Belgium. The paper examines labor market performance, and argues that a number of factors—poor worker-job matching, a compressed wage structure, and low geographical mobility—contribute to economic disparities. The paper...

This 2001 Article IV Consultation highlights that following four years of robust expansion, real GDP growth in Belgium slowed markedly in 2001, as higher oil prices, declining equity values, and the deteriorating external environment adversely affected business investment, household consumption,...

This paper provides a number of complementary estimates of potential output and the output gap—variables that cannot be observed directly. After a substantial increase in the tax wedge in the 1970s and the 1980s, which has been widely thought to have been partly responsible for the sharp rise...

Real GDP growth is expected to slow to 2.6 percent in 2001, following four consecutive years of strong economic growth. A number of structural labor market measures have also been introduced, including an employment program for youth, reforms to encourage employment among older people, and...

Measuring the size of the underground economy is obviously a difficult task. This paper reviews the literature, as applied to Belgium and elsewhere, on the determinants of the gray economy. The methods that have been used to measure the size of the gray economy are also discussed. The estimates...

This paper discusses the Observance of Standards and Codes and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations for Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) in Belgium. In Belgium, the financial intelligence unit (CTIF-CFI) has noted a shift in money laundering...