Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/173770 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
NBB Working Paper No. 314
Publisher: 
National Bank of Belgium, Brussels
Abstract: 
Jacques van Ypersele de Strihou is a discrete person but well-known in Belgian and international political and economic circles. After an outstanding academic career at the Universities of Namur, Leuven and Louvain and then at Yale in the United States where he gained a PhD, he started out his professional life as an official at the International Monetary Fund. He then returned to Belgium where he held important posts in various Finance Ministers' cabinets. He played a major role in European and international monetary negotiations, notably in his capacity as President of the European Monetary Committee when the European Monetary System was being set up. Later, as head of Prime Minister Wilfried Martens' cabinet, he was one of the architects of the 1982 devaluation of the Belgian franc. Discretion and modesty prevented Jacques van Ypersele from talking about himself much. He took some convincing before agreeing to be interviewed. The end result was these three interviews which took place at his home between June and October 2015 which he re-read the following summer. We were also given access to his private archives, the source of the documents published in the Annex.
Subjects: 
Jacques van Ypersele
economic crisis of the 1970s
European Monetary System
Belgian devaluation of 1982
JEL: 
A11
B22
E60
F50
N74
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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