El Consenso de Washington: aciertos, yerros y omisiones

Abstract

This paper analyses the economic and social development of Latin America after nearly two decades of macroeconomic policies and reforms in line with the “Washington Consensus”. It shows that these policies did lower inflation and induced an export boom, but failed to boost domestic investment and to remove the balance of payments binding constraint on the region’s long–term path of economic expansion. Four alternative explanations of such poor performance of the Washington Consensus are compared. It is argued, in particular, that, contrary to mainstream opinion, in Latin America there is no clear association between the depth of macroeconomic reforms and economic growth performance.