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T he economic performance of Latin America was disastrous in the 1980s. In what is often called the “lost decade,” the region’s economy was disrupted by an international debt crisis and raging inflation. Per capita GDP declined at an average annual rate of 0.6 percent in the 1980s. Toward the end of the 1980s, the frustration with the performance led to a search for sound macro and structural policies. Thus, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many countries in Latin America were receptive to a package of economic reforms that was dubbed the “Washington Consensus” (Williamson, 1990). The precise reforms varied from country to country, but in general they included some combination of fiscal and monetary tightness, greater openness to foreign trade (if not necessarily to foreign capital), privatization and deregulation. Yet the early 2000s have seen a disappointing economic performance in Latin America; for example, per capita GDP for the region contracted by 2.5 percent in 2002. The long-time opponents of the Washington Consensus reforms are in full cry. Implicitly and explicitly, they make three broad claims. First, they argue that the economic performance of Latin America has not improved since the 1980s—and that on certain dimensions, like inequality, the economic performance of the region has worsened. Second, they claim that the application of the Washington Consensus reforms is the cause of this poor performance. Third, they hark back to the more rapid growth experienced by Latin America from the 1950s and 1970s, and they argue that economic policy in Latin America should return to government infrastructure investment and industrialization through protection and import substitution that were popular in some countries at that time.

Latin America since the 1990s: Rising from the Sickbed?