Abstract Traditional policy reforms of the type embodied in the Washington Consensus have been out of academic fashion for decades. However, we are not aware of a paper that convincingly rejects the efficacy of these reforms. In this paper, we define generalized reform as a discrete, sustained jump in an index of economic freedom, whose components map well onto the points of the old consensus. We identify 49 cases of generalized reform in our dataset that spans 141 countries from 1970 to 2015. The average treatment effect associated with these reforms is positive, sizeable, and significant over 5- and 10- year windows. The result is robust to different thresholds for defining reform and different estimation methods. We argue that the policy reform baby was prematurely thrown out with the neoliberal bathwater.

中文翻译：

---

华盛顿共识工作：改革的因果效应，1970-2015

摘要 几十年来，华盛顿共识所体现的那种传统政策改革已经不合学术潮流。然而，我们不知道有一篇论文令人信服地否定了这些改革的有效性。在本文中，我们将广义改革定义为经济自由指数的离散、持续跳跃，其组成部分很好地映射到旧共识的要点。我们在 1970 年至 2015 年间跨越 141 个国家的数据集中确定了 49 个广义改革案例。与这些改革相关的平均治疗效果在 5 年和 10 年的窗口中是积极的、可观的和显着的。结果对于定义改革的不同阈值和不同的估计方法是稳健的。我们认为，政策改革的婴儿被新自由主义的洗澡水过早地抛弃了。