Direct investment and Belgium’s attractiveness

Belgium, which has long had direct investment links with other countries, is participating fully in the increasingly global economy. At the end of 2005, almost half of the equity capital invested in Belgian companies as a whole was owned directly or indirectly by foreign shareholders. The purpose of the article is to analyse Belgium’s foreign direct investment (FDI) and the incoming investment from abroad, and to view it in perspective, both over time and in relation to other developed countries, especially neighbouring countries. In addition, it aims to identify the main factors determining recent developments and Belgium’s relative position in 2005, the latest year for which data on FDI stocks are available. Although influenced by the same factors as those which determine the development of FDI on a global scale, direct investment links in Belgium differ from those in other developed economies in their magnitude. In fact, the ratio between FDI flows or stocks and GDP is significantly higher in Belgium than in the majority of other developed countries, for both incoming and outgoing FDI. The scale of Belgium’s direct investment links with foreign countries reflects both its function as a financial centre, particularly via the activities of the coordination centres, and its status as a small, open economy in a European Union where integration began earlier – and has progressed farther – than in other free trade areas. In the past ten years, Belgium’s FDI has expanded constantly and at a faster pace than domestic economic activity. While outgoing FDI has, like that of other developed countries, focused more on developing countries, driven by the search for new markets and lower costs, particularly for labourintensive activities, it is nevertheless still concentrated mainly on the developed countries, including the new EU members. The main protagonists in these capital transfers, effected partly via mergers and acquisitions, are Belgian firms active in the service sector. Over the same period, incoming FDI seems to have grown a little more slowly. In terms of stock, it actually stagnated in the early years of this century. However, the recent dynamism of FDI in Belgium has been at least as favourable as in the other European countries taken as a whole, and especially the neighbouring countries. Looking at greenfield investments, which actually lead to the creation or expansion of activities, the number of projects launched in Belgium has been rising, and at a similar rate to those developed in the EU as a whole. Belgium’s main strengths in terms of activity are chemicals – including life sciences – and transport and communications, particularly logistics and distribution. In general, the main motive for FDI projects in Belgium appears to be to serve the European market, or at least its most highly developed core, which includes Belgium. When a location is being selected for a project, Belgium is therefore competing with other EU countries and, more particularly, with neighbouring countries whose economic characteristics are comparable, notably in regard to their standard of living. Compared to other EU countries, especially the new members whose economies are less advanced, Belgium has a handicap in terms of hourly labour costs but, at the same time, it offers high productivity and various advantages as regards environmental and operational criteria, especially the quality of its infrastructures.foreign direct investment, attractiveness

Dynamics of the topological structures in inhomogeneous media

We present a general review of the dynamics of topological solitons in 1 and 2 dimensions and then discuss some recent work on the scattering of various solitonic objects (such as kinks and breathers etc) on potential obstructions.Comment: based on the talk given by W.J. Zakrzewski at QTS5. To appear in the Proceedings in a special issue of Journal of Physics

Dynamics of the topological structures in inhomogeneous media

We present a general review of the dynamics of topological solitons in 1 and 2 dimensions and then discuss some recent work on the scattering of various solitonic objects (such as kinks and breathers etc) on potential obstructions.Comment: based on the talk given by W.J. Zakrzewski at QTS5. To appear in the Proceedings in a special issue of Journal of Physics

Dynamics of the topological structures in inhomogeneous media

We present a general review of the dynamics of topological solitons in 1 and 2 dimensions and then discuss some recent work on the scattering of various solitonic objects (such as kinks and breathers etc) on potential obstructions.Comment: based on the talk given by W.J. Zakrzewski at QTS5. To appear in the Proceedings in a special issue of Journal of Physics

Formation of singularities for equivariant 2+1 dimensional wave maps into the two-sphere

In this paper we report on numerical studies of the Cauchy problem for equivariant wave maps from 2+1 dimensional Minkowski spacetime into the two-sphere. Our results provide strong evidence for the conjecture that large energy initial data develop singularities in finite time and that singularity formation has the universal form of adiabatic shrinking of the degree-one harmonic map from $\mathbb{R}^2$ into $S^2$.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, final version to be published in Nonlinearit

Chern-Simons Solitons, Toda Theories and the Chiral Model

The two-dimensional self-dual Chern--Simons equations are equivalent to the conditions for static, zero-energy solutions of the $(2+1)$-dimensional gauged nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with Chern--Simons matter-gauge dynamics. In this paper we classify all finite charge $SU(N)$ solutions by first transforming the self-dual Chern--Simons equations into the two-dimensional chiral model (or harmonic map) equations, and then using the Uhlenbeck--Wood classification of harmonic maps into the unitary groups. This construction also leads to a new relationship between the $SU(N)$ Toda and $SU(N)$ chiral model solutions

Baby Skyrme models for a class of potentials

We consider a class of (2+1) dimensional baby Skyrme models with potentials that have more than one vacum. These potentials are generalisation of old and new baby Skyrme models;they involve more complicated dependence on phi_3.We find that when the potential is invariant under phi_3 -> -phi_3 the configuration corresponding to the baby skyrmions lying "on top of each other" are the minima of the energy. However when the potential breaks this symmetry the lowest field configurations correspond to separated baby skyrmions. We compute the energy distributions for skyrmions of degrees between one and eight and discuss their geometrical shapes and binding energies. We also compare the 2-skyrmion states for these potentials. Most of our work has been performed numerically with the model being formulated in terms of three real scalar fields (satisfying one constraint).Comment: LaTeX, 14 pages, 10 figure

The Casimir energy of skyrmions in the 2+1-dimensional O(3)-model

One-loop quantum corrections to the classical vortices in 2+1 dimensional O(3)-models are evaluated. Skyrme and Zeeman potential terms are used to stabilize the size of topological solitons. Contributions from zero modes, bound-states and scattering phase-shifts are calculated for vortices with winding index n=1 and n=2. For both cases the S-matrix shows a pronounced series of resonances for magnon-vortex scattering in analogy to the well-established baryon resonances in hadron physics, while vortices with n>2 are already classically unstable against decay. The quantum corrections destabilize the classically bound n=2 configuration. Approximate independence of the results with respect to changes in the renormalization scale is demonstrated.Comment: 24 pages LaTeX, 14 figure

Gravitating monopoles in SU(3) gauge theory

We consider the Einstein-Yang-Mills-Higgs equations for an SU(3) gauge group in a spherically symmetric ansatz. Several properties of the gravitating monopole solutions are obtained an compared with their SU(2) counterpart.Comment: 7 pages, Latex, 3 figure