The international press has recently reported on the widely-held view in the financial markets that the movement of the Belgian industrial confidence indicator might precede the euro area business cycles. The initial purpose of this paper is to assess whether this market perception is more than...

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....