Peter De Keyzer

Peter De Keyzer (born 23 April 1975 in Etterbeek) is a Belgian economist, chief economist of BNP Paribas Fortis, part of the BNP Paribas banking group. In 2014, he was awarded the Prize for Liberty by Nova Civitas.

De Keyzer is, among other things, a strong proponent of the principle of a basic universal income. In a recent article in leading Dutch-language business newspaper De Tijd he argued, "A guaranteed basic income provides a solution for people with few job skills. Nowadays a lot of relatively uneducated people have too little to offer in order to warrant even the gross minimum wage. Today someone who is able to deliver only 700 euros of added value per month will not find an official job because an employer would be obliged to pay him or her not less than the gross national minimum wage of 1500 euros. This means that people with low educational qualifications remain unemployed, living on a social security allowance of 1100 euros. Setting a guaranteed basic income of 800 euros would solve the problem for both employers and the unemployed. The undereducated can get a job and will have much more left over for themselves at the end of the month than someone who is not working at all. Meanwhile the employer can afford to hire such people at a wage level that makes them worth their pay."

At the same time, De Keyzer argues for a free market economy in which prosperity and growth are driven not by state intervention but by a process of ‘creative destruction’. He recently wrote on this subject, "Are we poorer today because people no longer plough the fields manually or weave carpets by hand? Or because dairy farmers do not bring bottles of milk round to our houses anymore? New technologies foster greater prosperity and boost purchasing power. And we will be spending this money and these resources on services, products and experiences that we cannot imagine today. Of course this does not make life any easier for people whose jobs are at stake today. However, you are not going to help those people by entertaining misplaced nostalgia about how everything used to be better before and making attempts to hang on to doomed jobs. What will help, though, is thinking seriously about how they can contribute to prosperity going forward."

Education

De Keyzer completed his secondary education at the Our Lady of Lourdes College in Edegem, obtaining his high school diploma (sciences option) in 1993. He then pursued higher education studies at the University of Antwerp, where he was awarded a Master’s degree in economics in 1998, graduating magna cum laude.

He obtained a PhD in applied economic sciences, awarded cum laude, in 2000. His final paper was entitled "Is there an optimal degree of central bank independence?".

During his time at ABN AMRO, he followed a special Managing for Growth programme in 2007 and obtained a diploma in advanced risk management from the Solvay Master Class at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels) in 2008.

Professional career

From October 1998 to December 2000, De Keyzer was a research and teaching assistant to Professor André van Poeck and Professor Bruno De Borger in the Economics Faculty of the University of Antwerp.

He then worked successively as an economist at KBC Asset Management (January 2001 to December 2005), chief investment advisor at ABN AMRO Private Banking Belgium (January 2006 to August 2009) and chief economist at Petercam (September 2009 to April 2011).

Since April 2011, De Keyzer has been chief economist at BNP Paribas Fortis, succeeding Freddy Van Spiegel who had held the post for 35 years.

Other activities

Since 2004,r De Keyzer has been a regular guest lecturer at the University of Antwerp for students from Marquette University in Milwaukee, USA, taking part in the ‘Antwerp Programme’, and has lectured on the subject of "The European Union in the World Economy" to undergraduate exchange students on the Georgetown University MBA programme.

Since 2008, De Keyzer has been guest lecturer on the Master of Financial and Estate Planning programme run by Antwerp Management School, speaking on the subject of "The Macro Environment and Financial Markets".

From 2011 to 2014, De Keyzer taught on "Demographic Ageing and Financial Markets" at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Since 2009, he has been a member of the Bank Economists panel advising Febelfin, the Belgian financial sector federation.

In addition, De Keyzer writes a twice-monthly column for Belgian-Dutch language business daily newspaper De Tijd and its French-language sister publication L'Echo, and has also been a regular contributor to several other financial press organs on such topics as demography, economic growth, the euro zone and financial affairs. His book, Growth Makes You Happy – An Optimist’s View of Progress and the Free Market, has been reviewed on the World Economic Forum website.

De Keyzer is a member of the Advisory Board of the Economics Faculty at the University of Antwerp.

De Keyzer’s main fields of expertise are the European economy, the Eurozone, issues around "Japanisation", the work of the European Central Bank, quantitative easing and education.