Editing Washington Consensus (section)

==Context==
The widespread adoption by governments of the Washington Consensus was to a large degree a reaction to the [[macroeconomics|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, the rise in US (and hence international) interest rates, and—consequent to the foregoing problems—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 (by contrast, many countries in East Asia, which had followed more [[export-oriented industrialization|export-oriented strategies]], found it comparatively easy to expand exports still further, and as such managed to accommodate the external shocks with much less economic and social disruption). 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.<ref>See e.g., Patrice Franko, "The Puzzle of Latin American Development" (3rd edition, 2007), or Michael Read, "Forgotten Continent" (2007).</ref>

Many countries have endeavored to implement varying components of the reform packages, the implementation sometimes being a condition for receiving loans from the IMF and World Bank.<ref name="GPE" />