Washington Consensus

The Washington Consensus was a term coined by John Williamson in 1989 to describe a set of ten economic policies he felt that all in Washington, D.C. agreed with. Specifically, the policies were intended as ones that any nation receiving money from institutions like the IMF or World Bank should implement as a condition for the loan. They were not new policies or ideas in 1989, but policies that had already been advocated for some time. In Williamson's words, the ten policies are:

• 1. Fiscal Discipline.
• 2. Reordering Public Expenditure Priorities.
• 3. Tax Reform.
• 4. Liberalizing Interest Rates.
• 5. A Competitive Exchange Rate.
• 6. Trade Liberalization.
• 7. Liberalization of Inward Foreign Direct Investment.
• 8. Privatization.
• 9. Deregulation.
• 10. Property Rights.

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch articles

• World Bank
• International Monetary Fund
• India's New Economic Policy of 1991

External Resources

• Washington Consensus, Global Trade Negotiations Home Page, Center for International Development, Harvard University.
• Washington Consensus, World Health Organization.
• "John Williamson The Washington Consensus as Policy Prescription for Development," The World Bank, January 13, 2004.

Books

• Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine.

External Articles

• Mark Thoma, "Ben Bernanke and the Washington Consensus," CBS News, September 28, 2011.
• Nancy Birdsall and Francis Fukuyama, "The Post-Washington Consensus: Development After the Crisis, Foreign Affairs, Volume 9o • Number 2, March/April 2011.
• Kevin Gallagher, "The End of the Washington Consensus," The Guardian, March 7, 2011.
• John Williamson, "A Short History of the Washington Consensus]," Institute for International Economics.
• "What Was the Washington Consensus," Wisegeek.com.
• Moises Naim, "Fads and Fashion in Economic Reforms: Washington Consensus or Washington Confusion?," International Monetary Fund, October 26, 1999.
• Peter Gibbon, "The World Bank and African Poverty, 1973-91," Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Jun., 1992), pp. 193-220.