The National Bank of Belgium (NBB; Dutch: Nationale Bank van België, French: Banque nationale de Belgique, German: Belgische Nationalbank) has been the central bank of Belgium since 1850. The National Bank of Belgium was established with 100% private capital by a law of 5 May 1850 as a naamloze vennootschap (NV). It is a member of the European System of Central Banks.The Governor of the National Bank is a member of the Governing Council, the main decision-making body of the Eurosystem, particularly as regards monetary policy; the National Bank of Belgium participates in the preparation and execution of its decisions.Apart from monetary policy, the National Bank of Belgium takes on other tasks which can be classified as follows:50% of the NBB stock is freely traded on Euronext Brussels, the other 50% of the shares are owned by the Belgian government. (400.
We study heterogeneity in households' credit across nine European countries (Belgium, Spain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, and Slovakia) during 2022-24 using granular credit register data. We first document substantial between- and within-country variation in mortgage and consumer lending by borrower age, loan maturity, and interest rate fixation. We then quantify the pass-through of the ECB's recent tightening cycle to household borrowing costs, and assess its heterogeneous impact across households. Pass-through is nearly complete for mortgages (around 0.9) but considerably weaker for consumer credit (around 0.4). While mortgage pass-through is relatively homogeneous across countries, consumer credit shows pronounced cross-country differences that cannot be explained by borrower or loan characteristics. Younger households face stronger mortgage pass-through but weaker consumer credit pass-through relative to older borrowers, and longer maturities are associated with stronger pass-through in both credit markets.
This paper studies the short-run economic impact of unanticipated disruptions to inputs potentially critical for domestic production and the green transition, and prone to geopolitical weaponisation (Foreign Critical Inputs - FCIs). Using firm-level customs and balance-sheet data for Belgium, France, Italy, Slovenia, and Spain, we find that a 50% reduction in FCI imports from China-aligned countries could lead to an average decline in manufacturing value added of 2.7% across the five countries. The impact, however, is highly uneven across firms, sectors, and regions. These findings highlight that supply disruptions in FCIs can impose substantial short-run economic costs.
We study the relationship between offshoring and labor market imperfections at the firm level in Belgium and the Netherlands. In both countries, wage-markup pricing stemming from workers' monopoly power is more prevalent than wage-markdown pricing originating from firms' monopsony power. Offshoring is associated with a higher prevalence and intensity of wage markdowns, driven by an increase in productivity that is only imperfectly passed through into an increase in wages. The lower firm-level productivity-wage pass-through in Belgium, attributed to its more centralized bargaining structure, makes wage markdowns more responsive to offshoring.
How large is the state’s true economic presence? Standard measures focus on what state-owned enterprises (SOEs) directly produce, but this accounting misses something fundamental. SOEs are embedded in supply chains, selling inputs to private firms throughout the economy, and through these commercial linkages, government ownership extends its reach well beyond the public sector itself. This paper provides the first firm-to-firm measurement of this indirect footprint, linking the universe of Belgian business-to-business transactions to detailed ownership records. Our findings suggest standard measures significantly understate the state’s economic presence. In 2019, SOEs directly accounted for 6.4% of value added, yet firms purchasing from at least one SOE generated 87.9% of total value added. These patterns persist even when excluding utility providers: 83.8% of value added is generated by firms sourcing from non-utility SOEs. Weighting by actual dependence on SOE inputs yields an indirect footprint of 1.6% of value added. This indirect reach is not static: it has grown steadily over our sample period and surges during economic crises, when firms turn toward state-owned suppliers in relationships that often persist long after recovery. We further document that SOE sourcing correlates with lower productivity and profitability but greater stability and survival.
The relationship between a job loss and a partner’s labour supply—often called the added worker effect—is a well-studied phenomenon. However, people might already adjust their labour supply when their partner is at risk of losing his/her job. Using Labour Force Survey (LFS) microdata, we examine this relationship for 16 European countries over the period 2005–2020. When a couple member is at risk of losing his/her job, the partner is observed to be 2.4 percentage points more likely to enter the labour market (extensive margin) and 2.3 percentage points more likely to (want to) increase working hours (intensive margin). These patterns are almost as pronounced as those seen following an actual job loss for the intensive margin, and a bit more than half of those for the extensive margin. The fear of job loss appears to be an important additional factor associated with changes in couples’ labour supply. This is particularly noticeable in periods of crisis, when labour supply adjustments following a fear of job loss and an actual job loss are similarly strong. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that different couples adjust their labour supply at different moments, with low-educated people adjusting their behaviour when fearing job loss, while the high-educated tend to wait for this risk to materialize.
