Developments in private consumption over the past three years

Belgium weathered the 2008-2009 recession relatively well compared to the euro area as a whole and most of its constituent economies. In that context, the article sheds light on the interactions between the general economic situation and private consumption during the recession and in the recent recovery phase. As is generally the case during recessions, private consumption expenditure tended to decline to a lesser degree than general economic activity in Belgium in 2008-2009. The fall in private consumption expenditure turned out to be rather limited, especially when one considers the then plummeting economic activity. The two main avenues through which the crisis affected consumer spending were the erosion of people’s financial assets, and a considerable rise in uncertainty in late 2008 and early 2009. However, these effects faded away during the course of 2009. The resilience of private consumption in Belgium – which is also noticeable when compared internationally – can be related to the resilience of employment, which supported households’ disposable income. In addition, the sound situation of households and firms and the absence of great structural imbalances prior to the crisis supported general economic activity. In the future, maintaining an economic context free of serious imbalances, including a sustainable path for public finances, is crucial to favour a steady development of private consumption, contributing to balanced economic growth, income generation and job creation.Private consumption, households, wealth effect, savings rate

Computing the BRST Operator Used in Quantization of Gauge Theories

It is shown that for a large class of non-holonomic quantum mechanical systems one can make the computation of BRST charge fully algorithmic. Two computer algebra programs written in the language of {\tt REDUCE} are described. They are able to realize the complex calculations needed to determine the charge for general nonlinear algebras. Some interesting specific solutions are discussed.Comment: 13 pages, plain tex with vanilla.sty included at the end of the pape

Industry in Belgium : past developments and challenges for the future

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, deindustrialisation took the form of nominal activity and employment transfers between branches, i.e. from industry to services, while at the same time real industrial value added kept growing at a similar rate as the total economy, due to large productivity gains. Secondly, and partly linked to what precedes, economic globalisation was generalised thanks to liberalisation and technological progress, which has thoroughly modified the environment in which companies operate by opening up new markets and allowing an increased division of the production process in search of efficiency. Recently, these long-known trends seem to have further accelerated due to the emergence of rapidly growing economies, which are either closely linked to European countries (ten new member states) or are large-scale economies (China). More than ever, the industry’s future lies in safeguarding competitiveness and looking for new competitive edges, a challenge which it shares with the total economy. First of all, it requires a close monitoring of cost developments, especially as competition mainly takes place with neighbouring, thus similar, economies. In this respect, wages are an important, but only one component of production costs. Nevertheless, the competitiveness of an economy increasingly results from a large group of non-cost elements, which together determine its innovation capacity. Among these, we mainly stress the importance of continuous private and public investments, which are necessary to preserve and enhance the capital stock, of a well-educated and continuously trained labour force, of sufficient and well-oriented R&D efforts and of adequate and diversified sources of financing. Broadly speaking, innovation and economic dynamism require an integrated and extended approach, bringing together enterprises, research centres, universities and public authorities, in order for them to agree on a common view and maximise the spillover effects. Industry will still have an important role to play in meeting this objective.industry, deindustrialisation, globalisation, competitiveness, innovation

Do survey indicators let us see the business cycle ? A frequency decomposition

This paper uses a frequency domain approach to gain insight into the correlation between survey indicators and year-on-year GDP growth. Using the Baxter-King filter, we split up each series into three components: a short-term, a business cycle (oscillations between 18 and 96 months) and a long-term component. We then calculate how much of the variation of the survey series and GDP growth can be ascribed to these different components. Finally, we use this information together with an analysis of the correlation between survey indicators and year-on-year GDP growth at the different frequencies to explain their overall correlation. We show that survey indicators, similar to year-on-year GDP growth, do not perfectly reflect business cycle movements but contain cycles of other frequencies. Long-term cycles, in particular, are a nontrivial part of the series' variance. Furthermore, there exist some clear relations between the weight of these cycles in the survey indicators and their correlation with GDP growth. In general, the larger the business cycle component, the larger the correlation, while the opposite is true for the short-term component. The evidence for the long-term component is mixed: although a long-term component seems necessary as the correlation at this frequency is the highest, strong or weak long-term components are typically idiosyncratic, dragging down the overall correlation between the indicator and year-on-year GDP growth. The paper applies this methodology to the euro area countries (EC survey indicators) and to Belgium separately (NBB business survey indicators). The results are highly comparableBaxter-King, spectral analysis, survey indicators, correlation

Behaviour of Belgian firms in the context of globalisation : lessons from the conference on “International Trade : Threats and Opportunities in a Globalised World”

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 subject. Firms active internationally have specific characteristics : they are larger and more productive than firms concentrating on the home market. The costs of entering international markets determine their globalisation strategies, be it in terms of timing, the number of markets canvassed, or the choice between exporting and foreign direct investment. Information technologies have a key role in the development of trade in services, especially for analytical work. It is also shown that, in the face of increased competition from Asian products, firms are tending to concentrate their exports on their leading products and to upgrade quality. The international activities of some firms also have positive repercussions on the productivity and globalisation decisions of firms active solely on the home market. Finally, the impact of globalisation on employment is analysed from various angles. In general, trade with low-wage countries tends to increase demand for skilled labour in Belgium and to reduce demand for unskilled labour. The effects of offshoring are comparable. Finally, while multinationals manage their workforce more flexibly than domestic firms, they have nevertheless been the source of substantial job creation, particularly where the subsidiaries of foreign multinationals are concerned.international trade, foreign direct investment, microeconomic analysis, firm heterogeneity, internationalisation, spillovers, multi-product firms, multinational firms, offshoring, employment, skills

Schwinger-Dyson BRST-Symmetry and the Equivalence of Hamiltonian and Lagrangian Quantistion

Implementing the requirement that a field theory be invariant under Schwinger-Dyson BRST symmetry in the Hamiltonian formalism, we show the equivalence between Hamiltonian and Lagrangian BRST-formalism at the path integral level. The Lagrangian quantum master equation is derived as a direct consequence of the Fradkin-Vilkovisky theorem in Hamiltonian BRST quantisation.Comment: 10p, KUL-TF-93/08 and CERN- TH-6823/9

Belgium’s position in world trade

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 growth of new economic centres, the advanced economies generally having seen a drop in their market share. However, the growth in Belgium’s exports has lagged behind the average for twelve European countries going through the same major changes ; and the loss of market share has been higher than the average. A classical econometric analysis of price competitiveness shows up the limited role of relative export prices as a determinant in gains/losses of market share. This finding mainly reflects the fact that prices are largely fixed on international markets, producers cannot adjust their export prices according to the costs that they have to bear. In this context, a reasonable development of production costs, and with stronger reason wage costs, is essential in order to ensure the continuity of export activities. Beyond relative price effects, it is necessary to take into account structural elements in order to explain changes in market share. From this standpoint, it appears that the type of production has a crucial role to play. Faced with competition from emerging economies, Belgium’s external trade performance in the case of standardised products has been well below world demand. On the other hand, high-value-added products or those of a highly innovative nature or with a high research content are the ones that enable it to maintain or improve on its position in global trade. Export activities and innovation share some common features, not least because they are concentrated in the hands of a small number of large enterprises. In view of the high foreign market entry costs, the best performing firms are the ones that tend to be the exporters. However, factors such as the innovative nature of products on offer can of course influence the likelihood of success on foreign markets. Here, innovation efforts by Belgian firms are not creating enough opportunities for marketing new products. Yet, it is most certainly goods with a high value added or highly innovative products that Belgium will be able to count on to ensure sustainable economic development and to support the prosperity of its people.competitiveness, market share, export price, innovation, R&D

A modification of the 10d superparticle action inspired by the Gupta-Bleuler quantization scheme method

We reconsider the issue of the existence of a complex structure in the Gupta-Bleuler quantization scheme. We prove an existence theorem for the complex structure associated with the $d=10$ Casalbuoni-Brink-Schwarz superparticle, based on an explicitly constructed Lagrangian that allows a holomorphic-antiholomorphic splitting of the fermionic constraints consistent with the vanishing of all first class constraints on the physical states.Comment: 7 pages, LaTeX, to appear in Phys. Lett.

Local Community Rights and Trends Of Land Policy Reforms Under The Governance Of Large-Scale Rural Land Investment In Amhara National Regional State Ethiopia

Abstract: For the last two decades, land and land-related problems are more complicated ever before. Especially the proliferation of large-scale rural land investments and the vulnerability of the local communities in land abundant developing countries instigated researchers, human right activists, and international and regional organizations to proposed governance guidelines, principles, and codes of conduct for large-scale land investments. To identify policy flaws on the protection of local community rights under the governance process of large-scale rural land investment in Amhara National Regional State Ethiopia the commonalities of those international and regional accepted governance guiding lines and principles are taken as a point of reference to examine the land governance policies of the region through the approach of document analysis. The result shows all legislation with regard to the governance of large-scale rural land investment is flawed throughout the land policy reform processes and identified five ways in which the de jure land-related rights of the local communities are compromised and exacerbated the vulnerability of their livelihoods