This Working Paper is aimed at describing the current version of Federal Planning Bureau's medium-term macrosectoral model, named HERMES. This model is used to produce on a regular basis medium-term outlooks for the Belgian economy. In addition to the main macroeconomic aggregates (GDP, private...

This working paper describes the new version of MODTRIM II, the FPB's quarterly macroeconomic model for short-term forecasting. The short-term forecasts are published three times a year and are referred to as the “economic budget”, as they are used by the federal government to set up its...

This paper describes the operating mode of the two existing Belgian fiscal councils as well as their role in the budgetary planning process. These institutions, created or reformed in depth in a context of large public deficits and increasing public debt-to-GDP ratios coupled with the...

The Federal Planning Bureau has been publishing medium-term macroeconomic projections for the Belgian economy since the beginning of the eighties. In this working paper past projection errors are scrutinised to give users a broad idea of the uncertainties surrounding these projections. The...

Since 1994 the Federal Planning Bureau has been using the annual version of the econometric model modtrim as a central tool to produce its short-term macroeconomic forecasts. At the origin of the project, and as its name indicates, this annual version was meant to be short-lived and quickly...

A consensus quickly emerged among national and international organizations, based on past experiences, that the financial crisis that erupted in 2008 would have a long-lasting impact on the level of output. An initial quantification of the potential output loss imputable to the crisis for...

The concepts of potential growth and output gap are important tools to evaluate the state of the business cycle and to assess the supply-side capacity of an economy. They have also become an essential ingredient of the European fiscal surveillance process. However, the global economy is facing...