Washington Consensus

The term Washington Consensus was coined in 1989 by the economist John Williamson to describe a set of ten relatively specific economic policy prescriptions that he considered constituted the "standard" reform package promoted for developing countries by Washington, D.C.-based institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the US Treasury Department. These economic reforms, popular from the late 1970's to mid 1990's, are generally described as a form of economic liberalism, which seeks to emphasize the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade, and the open of markets. The adoption of these policies was often a precondition to receiving aid from the World Bank and IMF.

Though not Williamson's original intent, the Washington Consensus has become synonymous with ideas of market fundamentalism and neoliberalism. This liberalization of markets shaped policy in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa in the early 1990's, but with mixed results. The Washington Consensus has largely now been invalidated as developing countries that have avoided its rigid framework have seen their economies outgrow those that followed it closely. The Consensus has largely been replaced by a more flexible development approach that recognizes the State's ability to handle shocks better than an open market and that the states rent-seeking behavior can be curtailed by the construction of strong institutions and good governance practices.

Origin

The concept and name of the Washington Consensus were first presented in 1989 by John Williamson, an economist from the Institute for International Economics, an international economic think tank based in Washington, D.C. [1] Williamson used the term to summarize commonly shared policy themes advocated by Washington-based institutions at the time, such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and U.S. Treasury Department, which were believed to be necessary for the recovery of Latin America from the economic and financial crises of the 1980s.

The consensus as originally stated by Williamson included ten broad sets of relatively specific policy recommendations:

1. Fiscal policy discipline, with avoidance of large fiscal deficits relative to GDP;
2. Redirection of public spending from subsidies toward broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary health care and infrastructure investment;
3. Tax reform, broadening the tax base and adopting moderate marginal tax rates;
4. Interest rates dictated by market forces;
5. Competitive exchange rates;
6. Trade liberalization: liberalization of imports, with particular emphasis on elimination of tariffs;
7. Liberalization of inward foreign direct investment;
8. Privatization of state enterprises;
9. Deregulation: abolition of regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition, except for those justified on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and prudential oversight of financial institutions;
10. Legal security for property rights.

Willamson's article was a node to a movement that had been occurring since the late 1970's away from state led development towards neoliberal orthodoxy's like individualism, market liberalism, and a smaller role of governments in the economy. This movement saw government intervention as a distortion of market prices and believed governments be regulated to the merely the arena of property rights, macroeconomic stability, infrastructure, and creating some public goods like education would spur economic growth. Additionally, neoliberals contended this type of reduction of the State's power would prevent bureaucrats and politicians from participating in rent-seeking behavior and thus siphon off resources that would otherwise be used for productive purposes.

Application

The widespread adoption by governments of the Washington Consensus was to a large degree a reaction to the macroeconomic crisis that hit much of Latin America, and some other developing regions, during the 1980s. The crisis had multiple origins: the drastic rise in the price of imported oil following the emergence of OPEC, mounting levels of external debt, interest rates, and loss of access to additional foreign credit. The import-substitution policies that had been pursued by many developing country governments in Latin America and elsewhere for several decades had left their economies ill-equipped to expand exports at all quickly to pay for the additional cost of imported oil. Unable either to expand external borrowing further or to ramp up export earnings easily, many Latin American countries faced no obvious sustainable alternatives to reducing overall domestic demand via greater fiscal discipline, while in parallel adopting policies to reduce protectionism and increase their economies' export orientation.

Although Williamson's label of the Washington Consensus draws attention to the role of the Washington-based agencies in promoting the above agenda, a number of authors have stressed that Latin American policy-makers arrived at their own packages of policy reforms primarily based on their own analysis of their countries' situations. Thus, according to Joseph Stanislaw and Daniel Yergin, authors of The Commanding Heights, the policy prescriptions described in the Washington Consensus were "developed in Latin America, by Latin Americans, in response to what was happening both within and outside the region." Joseph Stiglitz has written that "the Washington Consensus policies were designed to respond to the very real problems in Latin America and made considerable sense" (though Stiglitz has at times been an outspoken critic of IMF policies as applied to developing nations).

A 2010 paper by Nancy Birdsall, Augusto de la Torre, and Felipe Valencia Caicedo likewise suggests that the policies in the original consensus were largely a creation of Latin American politicians and technocrats, with Williamson's role having been to gather the ten points in one place for the first time, rather than to "create" the package of policies.

In Williamson's own words from 2002:

It is difficult even for the creator of the term to deny that the phrase "Washington Consensus" is a damaged brand name (Naím 2002). Audiences the world over seem to believe that this signifies a set of neoliberal policies that have been imposed on hapless countries by the Washington-based international financial institutions and have led them to crisis and misery. There are people who cannot utter the term without foaming at the mouth.

I of course never intended my term to imply policies like capital account liberalization, monetarism, supply-side economics, or a minimal state, which I think of as the quintessentially neoliberal ideas. If that is how the term is interpreted, then we can all enjoy its wake, although let us at least have the decency to recognize that these ideas have rarely dominated thought in Washington and certainly never commanded a consensus there or anywhere much else.

More specifically, Williamson argues that the first three of his ten prescriptions are uncontroversial in the economic community. He argues that one of the least controversial prescriptions, the redirection of spending to infrastructure, health care, and education, has often been neglected. He also argues that, while the prescriptions called for reducing certain functions of government, others had would strengthen the government's ability to support education and health.

Criticisms of the Washington Consensus policies

Most of the criticism's of the Washington Consensus have been around its failure to focus on strong institutions, preemptive opening of credit markets, and one size fits all approach. Gobind Nankani, a former vice-president for Africa at the World Bank, said: "there is no unique universal set of rules.... [W]e need to get away from formulae and the search for elusive ‘best practices’...." (p. xiii). As outlined by the The World Bank's report Learning from Reform, in spite of efforts at policy reform, changes in the political and external environments, and continued heavy influx of foreign aid many Sub-Saharan African's economies failed to take off during the 1990s. Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique were among countries that showed some success, but they remained fragile. Additionally, there were several successive and painful financial crises in areas of Latin America, East Asia, Russia, and Turkey that implemented market liberalization. The most compelling evidence of failure is in Latin America, led by the "poster boy" of the IMF Argentina, where there was less growth in per capita GDP than in the period of between 1950-80.

A significant body of economists and policy-makers argue that what was wrong with the Washington Consensus had less to do with what was included than with what was missing, and that countries in Latin America and elsewhere need to move beyond "first generation" macroeconomic and trade reforms to a stronger focus on productivity-boosting reforms and direct programs to support the poor. This includes improving the investment climate, strengthening institutions, fighting poverty directly via the types of Conditional Cash Transfer programs adopted by countries like Mexico and Brazil, improving the quality of primary and secondary education, boosting countries' effectiveness at developing and absorbing technology, and addressing the special needs of historically disadvantaged groups including indigenous peoples and Afro-descendant populations across Latin America.

Williamson himself has summarized the overall results on growth, employment and poverty reduction in many countries as "disappointing, to say the least." He attributes this limited impact to three factors: (a) the Consensus per se placed no special emphasis on mechanisms for avoiding economic crises, which has proved very damaging; (b) the reforms—both those listed in his article and, a fortiori, those actually implemented—were incomplete; and (c) the reforms cited were insufficiently ambitious with respect to targeting improvements in income distribution, and need to be complemented by stronger efforts in this direction. Rather than an argument for abandoning the original ten prescriptions, though, Williamson concludes that they are "motherhood and apple pie" and "not worth debating". Both Williamson and other analysts have pointed to longer term improvements in economic performance in a number of countries that have adopted the relevant policy changes consistently, such as Chile.

Among other results of the recent global financial crisis there has been a strengthening of belief in the importance of local development models as more suitable than programmatic approaches. Some elements of this school of thought were summarized in the idea of a "Beijing Consensus" [2] which suggested that there is no blue print for success, instead there needs to be a "commitment to innovation and constant experimentation."

Anti-globalization movement

Many critics of trade liberalization, such as Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Susan George, and Naomi Klein, see the Washington Consensus as a way to open the labor market of underdeveloped economies to exploitation by companies from more developed economies. The prescribed reductions in tariffs and other trade barriers allow the free movement of goods across borders according to market forces, but labor is not permitted to move freely due to the requirements of a visa or a work permit. This creates an economic climate where goods are manufactured using cheap labor in underdeveloped economies and then exported to rich First World economies for sale at what the critics argue are huge markups, with the balance of the markup said to accrue to large multinational corporations. The criticism is that workers in the Third World economy nevertheless remain poor, as any pay raises they may have received over what they made before trade liberalization are said to be offset by inflation, whereas workers in the First World country become unemployed, while the wealthy owners of the multinational grow even more wealthy.

Anti-globalization critics further claim that First World countries impose what the critics describe as the consensus's neoliberal policies on economically vulnerable countries through organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and by political pressure and bribery. They argue that the Washington Consensus has not, in fact, led to any great economic boom in Latin America, but rather to severe economic crises and the accumulation of crippling external debts that render the target country beholden to the First World.

Many of the policy prescriptions (e.g., the privatization of state industries, tax reform, and deregulation) are criticized as mechanisms for ensuring the development of a small, wealthy, indigenous elite in the Third World who will rise to political power and also have a vested interest in maintaining the local status quo of labor exploitation.

Some specific factual premises of the critique as phrased above (especially on the macroeconomic side) are not accepted by defenders, or indeed all critics, of the Washington Consensus. To take a few examples, inflation in many developing countries is now at its lowest levels for many decades (low single figures for very much of Latin America). Workers in factories created by foreign investment are found typically to receive higher wages and better working conditions than are standard in their own countries' domestically-owned workplaces. Economic growth in much of Latin America in the last few years has been at historically high rates, and debt levels, relative to the size of these economies, are on average significantly lower than they were several years ago.

Despite these macroeconomic advances, poverty and inequality remain at high levels in Latin America. About one of every three people - 165 million in total- still live on less than $2 a day. Roughly a third of the population has no access to electricity or basic sanitation, and an estimated 10 million children suffer from malnutrition. These problems are not, however, new: Latin America was the most economically unequal region in the world in 1950, and has continued to be so ever since, during periods both of state-directed import-substitution and (subsequently) of market-oriented liberalization.

Some socialist political leaders in Latin America are vocal and well-known critics of the Washington Consensus, such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Cuban ex-President Fidel Castro, Bolivian President Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador. In Argentina, too, the recent Peronist party government of Néstor Kirchner undertook policy measures which represented a repudiation of at least some Consensus policies (see Continuing Controversy below).

Others on the Latin American left take a different approach. Governments led by the Socialist Party of Chile, by Alan García in Peru, by Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay, and by Lula in Brazil, have in practise maintained a high degree of continuity with the economic policies described under the Washington Consensus (debt-paying, protection to foreign investment, financial reforms, etc.). But governments of this type have simultaneously sought to supplement these policies by measures directly targeted at improving productivity and helping the poor, such as education reforms and subsidies to poor families conditioned on their children staying in school.

Neo-Keynesian criticisms

Neo-Keynesian and post-Keynesian critics of the Consensus have argued that the underlying policies were incorrectly laid down and are too rigid to be able to succeed. For example, flexible labor laws were supposed to create new jobs, but economic evidence from Latin America is inconclusive on this point. In addition, some argue that the package of policies does not take into account economic and cultural differences between countries. Some critics have argued that this set of policies should be implemented, if at all, during a period of rapid economic growth and not—as often is the case—during an economic crisis.

Moisés Naím, chief editor of Foreign Policy, has made the argument that there was no 'consensus' in the first place. He has argued that there are and have been major differences between economists over what is the 'correct economic policy', hence the idea of there being a consensus was also flawed.

Invalidation

From it's height in the early 1990's the Consensus fell slowly out of favor until the 2008–2009 global financial crisis put the "final nail in the coffin."

Following the strong intervention undertaken by governments in response to market failures, a number of journalists, politicians and senior officials from global institutions such as the World Bank began pronouncing the Washington Consensus was dead. These included former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who following the 2009 G-20 London summit, declared "the old Washington Consensus is over". Williamson was asked by the Washington Post in April 2009 whether he agreed with Gordon Brown that the Washington Consensus was dead. He responded:

It depends on what one means by the Washington Consensus. If one means the ten points that I tried to outline, then clearly it's not right. If one uses the interpretation that a number of people -- including Joe Stiglitz, most prominently -- have foisted on it, that it is a neoliberal tract, then I think it is right.

Dani Rodrik's2006 article "Goodbye Washington Census, Hello Washington Confusion" noted:

The debate now is not over whether the Washington Consensus is dead or alive, but over what will replace it. An important marker in this intellectual terrain is the World Bank’s Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform (2005). With its emphasis on humility, policy diversity, selective and modest reforms, and experimentation, this is a rather extraordinary document demonstrating the extent to which the thinking of the development policy community has been transformed over the years. But there are other competing perspectives as well. One (trumpeted elsewhere in Washington) puts faith on extensive institutional reform, and another (exemplified by the U.N. Millennium Report) puts faith on foreign aid. Sorting intelligently among these diverse perspectives requires an explicitly diagnostic approach that recognizes that the binding constraints on growth differ from setting to setting." <

This perspective was echoed by Joseph Stiglitz in "More instruments and broader goals: moving toward the post-Washington consensus", Joshua Cooper Ramo in the "The Beijing Consensus," Ziya Onis in"Rethinking the Emerging Post‐Washington Consensus" and Williamson himself in "What should the World Bank think about the Washington Consensus?"

Policy implications

Argentinean Experience

In October 1998 the IMF invited Argentine President Carlos Menem, to talk about the successful Argentine experience, at the Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors. President Menem's Minister of Economy (1991–1996), Domingo Cavallo, the architect of the Menem administration's economic policies, specifically including "convertibility", made the claim that Argentina was at that moment, "considered as the best pupil of the IMF, the World Bank and the USA government":

On the second semester of 1998 Argentina was considered in Washington the most successful economy among the ones that had restructurated its debt within the Brady's Plan framework. None of the Washington Consensus' sponsors were interested in pointing out that the Argentine economic reforms had differences with its 10 recommendations. On the contrary, Argentina was considered the best pupil of the IMF, the World Bank and the USA government.

—Domingo Cavallo, former Argentine Minister of Economy (1991–1996).

However, in 1999 the Argentine economy suffered as the World Bank mandated that it commit itself to financial austerity, which eventually lead to crashing of Argentinean bonds on the international market. The Argentine economic crisis of 1999–2002 is often held out as an example of the economic devastation said by some to have been wrought by application of the Washington Consensus. Argentina's Deputy Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana, in an interview with the state news agency Télam on August 16, 2005, attacked the Washington Consensus. There never was a real consensus for such policies, he said, and today "a good number of governments of the hemisphere are reviewing the assumptions with which they applied those policies in the 1990s", adding that governments are looking for a development model to guarantee productive employment and the generation of real wealth. [3]

Many economists, however, challenge the view that Argentina's failure can be attributed to close adherence to the Washington Consensus. The country's adoption of an idiosyncratic fixed exchange rate regime ("convertibility"), which became increasingly uncompetitive, together with its failure to achieve effective control over its fiscal accounts, both ran counter to central provisions of the Consensus, and paved the way directly for the ultimate macroeconomic collapse. The market-oriented policies of the early Menem-Cavallo years, meanwhile, soon petered out in the face of domestic political constraints (including Menem's preoccupation with securing re-election).

The problems which arise with reliance on a fixed exchange rate mechanism (above) are discussed in the World Bank report Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform, which questions whether expectations can be "positively affected by tying a government's hands". In the early 1990s there was a point of view that countries should move to either fixed or completely flexible exchange rates to reassure market participants of the complete removal of government discretion in foreign exchange matters. After the Argentina collapse, some observers believe that removing government discretion by creating mechanisms that impose large penalties may, on the contrary, actually itself undermine expectations. Velasco and Neut (2003) "argues that if the world is uncertain and there are situations in which the lack of discretion will cause large losses, a precommitment device can actually make things worse". In the chapter 7 of its report (Financial Liberalization: What Went Right,What Went Wrong?) the World Bank analyses what went wrong in Argentina, summarizes the lessons from the experience, and draws suggestions for its future policy.

The IMF's Independent Evaluation Office has issued a review of the lessons of Argentina for the institution, summarized in the following quotation:

The Argentine crisis yields a number of lessons for the IMF, some of which have already been learned and incorporated into revised policies and procedures. This evaluation suggests ten lessons, in the areas of surveillance and program design, crisis management, and the decision-making process.

Mark Weisbrot says that, in more recent years, Argentina under former President Néstor Kirchner made a break with the Consensus and that this led to a significant improvement in its economy; some add that Ecuador may soon follow suit. However, while Kirchner's reliance on price controls and similar administrative measures (often aimed primarily at foreign-invested firms such as utilities) clearly ran counter to the spirit of the Consensus, his administration in fact ran an extremely tight fiscal ship and maintained a highly competitive floating exchange rate; Argentina's immediate bounce-back from crisis, further aided by abrogating its debts and a fortuitous boom in prices of primary commodities, leaves open issues of longer-term sustainability. The Economist has argued that the Néstor Kirchner administration will end up as one more in Argentina's long history of populist governments. In October 2008, Kirchner's wife and successor as President, Cristina Kirchner, announced her government's intention to nationalize pension funds from the privatized system implemented by Menem-Cavallo. Accusations have emerged of the manipulation of official statistics under the Kirchners (most notoriously, for inflation) to create an inaccurately positive picture of economic performance.

In 2003, Argentina's then-President Néstor Kirchner and Brazilian President Lula da Silva signed the "Buenos Aires Consensus", a manifesto in opposition to the policies of the Washington Consensus. Skeptical political observers note, however, that Lula's rhetoric on such public occasions should be distinguished from the policies actually implemented by his administration. This said, Lula da Silva paid the whole of the Brazilian debt with the IMF two years in advance, freeing his government from IMF tutelage, as did Néstor Kirchner's government in 2005.

Subsidy for agriculture in Malawi

Some critics of the Washington Consensus cite Malawi's experience with agricultural subsidies as exemplifying perceived flaws in the package's prescriptions. For decades, the World Bank and donor nations pressed Malawi, a predominantly rural country in Africa, to cut back or eliminate government fertilizer subsidies to farmers. World Bank experts also urged the country to have Malawi farmers shift to growing cash crops for export and to use foreign exchange earnings to import food. For years, Malawi hovered on the brink of famine; after a particularly disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid. Malawi's newly elected president Bingu wa Mutharika then decided to reverse policy. Introduction of deep fertilizer subsidies (and lesser ones for seed), abetted by good rains, helped farmers produce record-breaking corn harvests in 2006 and 2007; according to government reports, corn production leapt from 1.2 million metric tons in 2005 to 2.7 million in 2006 and 3.4 million in 2007. The prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply and Malawi recently turned away emergency food aid.

In a commentary on the Malawi experience prepared for the Center for Global Development, development economists Vijaya Ramachandran and Peter Timmer argue that fertilizer subsidies in parts of Africa (and Indonesia) can have benefits that substantially exceed their costs. They caution, however, that how the subsidy is operated is crucial to its long-term success, and warn against allowing fertilizer distribution to become a monopoly. Ramachandran and Timmer also stress that African farmers need more than just input subsidies—they need better research to develop new inputs and new seeds, as well as better transport and energy infrastructure. The World Bank reportedly now sometimes supports the temporary use of fertilizer subsidies aimed at the poor and carried out in a way that fosters private markets: "In Malawi, Bank officials say they generally support Malawi's policy, though they criticize the government for not having a strategy to eventually end the subsidies, question whether its 2007 corn production estimates are inflated and say there is still a lot of room for improvement in how the subsidy is carried out".

The Augmented Washington Consensus

In a book edited with Pedro-Pablo Kuczynski in 2003, Williamson laid out an expanded reform agenda, emphasizing crisis-proofing of economies, "second-generation" reforms, and policies addressing inequality and social issues.

1. Corporate governance
2. Anti-corruption
3. Flexible labor markets
4. WTO agreements
5. Financial codes and standards
6. Prudent capital-account opening
7. Non-intermediate exchange rate regimes
8. Independent central banks/inflation targeting
9. Social safety nets
10. Targeted poverty reduction

Rodrik (2003) suggests that the augmented Washington Consensus is a nod to movement of development economist, in early 2000s, away from market fundamentalism towards "institutional fundamentalism." This movement gained wide acceptance after Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson's essay "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," Ross Levine and William Easterly's "Tropics, Germs, and Crops: How Endowments Influence Economic Development," and Paul Collier and David Dollar's "Can the World Cut Poverty in Half? How Policy Reform and Effective Aid Can Meet International Development."

Continuing controversy

Most Latin American countries continue to struggle with high poverty and underemployment. Chile has been offered as an example of a Consensus success story, and countries such as El Salvador and Uruguay have also shown some positive signs of economic development. Brazil, despite relatively modest rates of aggregate growth, has seen important progress in recent years in the reduction of poverty.

Joseph Stiglitz has argued that the Chilean success story owes a lot to state ownership of key industries, particularly its copper industry, and currency interventions stabilizing capital flows. Many other economists, though, argue that Chile's economic success is largely due to its combination of sound macroeconomics and market-oriented policies (though the country's relatively strong public institutions, including one of the better public school systems in the region, also deserve some credit).

There have been claims of discrepancies between the Washington Consensus as propounded by Williamson, and the policies actually implemented with the endorsement of the Washington institutions themselves. For example, the Washington Consensus stated a need for investment in education, but the policies of fiscal discipline promoted by the International Monetary Fund have sometimes in practice led countries to cut back public spending on social programs, including such areas as basic education. Those familiar with the work of the IMF respond that, at a certain stage, countries near bankruptcy have to cut back their public spending one way or another to live within their means. Washington may argue for enlightened choices among different public spending priorities, but in the last analysis it is domestically-elected political leaders who ultimately have to make the tough political choices.

Alternative uses

In early 2008, the term "Washington Consensus" was used in a different sense as a metric for analyzing American mainstream media coverage of U.S. foreign policy generally and Middle East policy specifically. Marda Dunsky writes, "Time and again, with exceedingly rare exceptions, the media repeat without question, and fail to challenge the "Washington consensus"—the official mind-set of US governments on Middle East peacemaking over time." According to syndicated columnist William Pfaff, Beltway centrism in American mainstream media coverage of foreign affairs is the rule rather than the exception: "Coverage of international affairs in the US is almost entirely Washington-driven. That is, the questions asked about foreign affairs are Washington's questions, framed in terms of domestic politics and established policy positions. This invites uninformative answers and discourages unwanted or unpleasant views." Like the economic discussion above the foreign policy usage of the term has less to do with what is included than with what is missing.

A similar view, though by a different name, is taken by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), a progressive media criticism organization. They note "Official Agendas" as one of nine 'issue areas’ they view as causing ‘What's Wrong With the News?" They note: "Despite the claims that the press has an adversarial relationship with the government, in truth U.S. media generally follow Washington's official line. This is particularly obvious in wartime and in foreign policy coverage, but even with domestic controversies, the spectrum of debate usually falls in the relatively narrow range between the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties."

See also

Bretton Woods system Macroeconomics Gross domestic product Democratic capitalism Economic growth Hyperinflation North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)

World Systems Theory Andre Gunder Frank Immanuel Wallerstein Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Structural adjustment Beijing Consensus Mumbai Consensus

Sources

Development of the Washington Consensus model

• Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action, Eliot Berg, coord., (World Bank, 1981).
• After the Washington Consensus: Restarting Growth and Reform in Latin America, Kuczynski, Pedro-Paul, and John Williamson, eds., Washington, D.C., Institute for International Economics, 2003.
• The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, by Michael Novak (1982).
• El Otro Sendero (The Other Path), by Hernando de Soto (1986).
• Toward Renewed Economic Growth in Latin America, by Bela Balassa, Gerardo M. Bueno, Pedro-Pablo Kuczynski, and Mario Henrique (Institute for International Economics, 1986).
• Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened, edited by John Williamson (Institute for International Economics, 1990).
• The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America, edited by Rudiger Dornbusch and Sebastian Edwards (1991).
• Global Linkages: Macroeconomic Interdependence and Cooperation in the World Economy, by Jeffrey Sachs and Warwick McKibbin (1991).
• World Development Report 1991: The Challenge of Development, by Lawrence Summers, Vinod Thomas, et al. (World Bank, 1991).
• "Development and the "Washington Consensus"", in World Development Vol 21:1239–1336 by John Williamson (1993).
• "Recent Lessons of Development", Lawrence H. Summers & Vinod Thomas (1993).
• Latin America's Journey to the Market: From Macroeconomic Shocks to Institutional Therapy, by Moises Naím (1994).
• Economistas y Politicos: La Política de la Reforma Económica, by Agustín Fallas-Santana (1996).
• The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered, by George Soros (1997).
• Beyond Tradeoffs: Market Reform and Equitable Growth in Latin America, edited by Nancy Birdsall, Carol Graham, and Richard Sabot (Brookings Institution, 1998).
• The Third Way: Toward a Renewal of Social Democracy, by Anthony Giddens (1998).
• The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, by Thomas Friedman (1999).
• "Fads and Fashion in Economic Reforms: Washington Consensus or Washington Confusion?", by Moisés Naím (IMF, 1999).
• Washington Contentious: Economic Policies for Social Equity in Latin America, by Nancy Birdsall and Augusto de la Torre (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Inter-American Dialogue, 2001)
• "Did the Washington Consensus Fail?", by John Williamson (Speech at IIE, 2002).
• After the Washington Consensus, edited by Pedro-Pablo Kuczynski and John Williamson (Institute for International Economics, 2003).
• Implementing Economic Reforms in Mexico: The Washington Consensus as a Roadmap for Developing Countries by Terrence Fluharty (2007) http://ecommons.txstate.edu/arp/183/

Analysis and critiques

• Dani Rodrik. Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion? Harvard University, January 2006
• The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw (2002). PBS series and book that traces the debate between advocates of the Washington Consensus and their critics.
• The contentious Washington Consensus: reforming the reforms in emerging markets. by Carlos Santiso (2004). Review of International Political Economy 11(4).
• Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization, and Development (Initiative for Policy Dialogue Series C) ; by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jose Antonio Ocampo, Shari Spiegel, Ricardo Ffrench-Davis, and Deepak Nayyar; Oxford University Press 2006
• Economic Crisis and Policy Choice: The Politics of Adjustment in the Third World, edited by Joan M. Nelson (1990).
• Latin American Political Economy in the Age of Neoliberal Reform and Democracy, Markets, and Structural Reform in Latin America, edited by William C. Smith, Carlos H. Acuña, and Eduardo A. Gamarra (North-South Center, 1994).
• Crisis and Reform in Latin America: From Despair to Hope, by Sebastian Edwards (1995).
• Politics, Social Change, and Economic Restructuring in Latin America, by William C. Smith and Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz (North-South Center, 1997).
• Fault Lines of Democracy in Post-Transition Latin America, Felipe Agüero and Jeffrey Stark (1998).
• What Kind of Democracy? What Kind of Market? Latin America in the Age of Neoliberalism, by Philip D. Oxhorn and Graciela Ducatenzeiler (1998).
• Latin America Transformed: Globalization and Modernity, by Robert N. Gwynne and Cristóbal Kay (1999).
• The Internationalization of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists, and the Contest to Transform Latin American States, by Yves Dezalay and Bryant G. Garth (2002).
• From the "Washington" towards a "Vienna Consensus"? A quantitative analysis on globalization, development and global governance, by Arno Tausch and Christian Ghymers, Nova Science Publishers, Hauppauge, New York, 2006
• FONDAD: Diversity in Development: Reconsidering the Washington Consensus, edited by Jan Joost Teunissen and Age Akkerman (2004).
• The Washington Consensus as Policy Prescription for Development (World Bank)
• What Should the World Bank Think about the Washington Consensus?, by John Williamson.
• Fabian Global Forum for Progressive Global Politics: The Washington Consensus, by Adam Lent.
• The Economics of Empire - Notes on the Washington Consensus, by William Finnegan.
• Unraveling the Washington Consensus, An Interview with Joseph Stiglitz
• How the IMF Props Up the Bankrupt Dollar System
• The Scorecard on Development, 1960-2010: Closing the Gap? - Center for Economic and Policy Research report, April 2011

External links

• Center for International Development at Harvard University describing the Washington Consensus
  • Cited links to the above article
• Beyond the Washington Consensus by Jeremy Clift