Le degré de dépendance de l’économie belge vis-à-vis du commerce extérieur pose en même temps des limites à l’autonomie de notre politique économique. Cette dépendance s’exprime pour l’essentiel sous la forme d’une double question: dans quelle mesure nos prix dépendent-ils de ceux de nos importations, dans quelle mesure notre production dépend-elle du volume de nos exportations? Dans les deux cas, le chiffre a fait l’objet de controverses. Il est vrai que sur ce point, l’enjeu politique est capital. Une vulnérabilité élevée au commerce extérieur implique un dosage de politique économique orienté par priorité vers la défense de notre position concurrentielle. Dans l’alternative, ce dernier problème perd de son importance et justifie des mesures de demand-management plus actives.

In this paper we present an econometric model for the determination of the Belgian short term interest rate. The different behavioral equations will be estimated. Our approach differs in this respect from the studies of other Belgian authors (e.g. Clavijo-Kervyn, Société Générale de Banque, Hernandez Lopez) who have estimated a reduced form for the short term interest rate. The estimation of a structural model allows us to capture structural aspects and to take specific monetary policy instruments into account. It is therefore also easier to analyse the channels through which monetary policy instruments influence the short term interest rate.

Discussion of economics of exhaustible resource in its modern form stemmed from Hotellings 1931 paper. The principles of optimal resource utilisation are now fairly clearly understood in the context of centrally planned economies but it is only since Hotellings paper that there has been a limited amount of work done on the description of behaviour of resource extractors in a market economy and there has still been virtually no work done in this literature on government policy over natural resources and their extraction in a market economy with the exception of a brief cryptic passage in Hotellings paper. Since Hotellings paper is an obvious point of departure for the exercises of the present it is worth summarising his framework.

Several optimal growth theorists have used a momentary utility function exihibiting constant elasticity of marginal utility. The usual formulation is

where U[·] = total per capita utiliy at time t, c(t) = per capita consumption at time t and v is a positive constant not equal to unity. Elasticity of marginal utility is given by