The objective of the article is to give a general overview of the position that Belgium occupies in the world trade stakes and its ability to adjust in response to changes in the international environment. Over the last two decades, world trade has expanded considerably, buoyed up by the rapid...

The article summarises the main lessons of the Bank’s 2010 conference which focused on international trade and foreign direct investment. The research is based on a microeconomic approach to the behaviour of Belgian firms, with reference to developments in the scientific literature on the...

The article constitutes the synthesis of a broad study on industry in Belgium, conducted by the NBB, at the request of social partners. Some contributions were also made by the Federal Planning Bureau. In the past decades, industry has been submitted to two global trends. Firstly,...

Against the backdrop of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the thirties, the article analyses developments in business investment in Belgium. Firstly, it should be noted that, in 2009, Belgian business investment witnessed the biggest slump since 1980. However, when this...

Data on global value chains are shedding new light on foreign trade. Since exports largely rely on intermediate imports, breaking up exports into foreign and domestic value-added content allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the foreign trade and the national accounts statistics....

While being a key sector in all developed economies, retail trade does actually appear to be one of the reasons for Europe’s lagging behind in potential output growth. One of the reasons for this lag could be regulation. By determining conditions for market access and for carrying out a...

This article first reviews the main determinants of bank loans’ interest rates and offers a brief discussion of the impact of capital requirements on interest rate margins. Next, it presents some empirical evidence, first, on the pass-through of the central bank rate to market rates and,...

The article looks at the energy markets from a macroeconomic perspective. It first describes the main trends in the production and consumption of energy. Belgium is characterised by a high degree of energy dependency, since it no longer has any fossil fuel resources and renewable energy is not...

When analysing corporate finance, it is necessary to take account of various factors which may cause significant disparities between firms, such as their size and their sector of activity. Taking account of the size aspect, by neutralising sectoral disparities, there are few differences between...

Share issues are a significant source of finance for non-financial corporations in Belgium. Between 1995 and 2005, they represented around 32 p.c. of the cumulative new liabilities of non-financial corporations. Share issues are therefore the second most important source of finance, the first...