John Williamson (economist)

John Williamson (economist)

John Williamson (born June 7, 1937, Hereford, England) is an economist and coined the term Washington Consensus. He is a critic of capital liberalization and the bipolar exchange rate.

Williamson has been a Senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 1981. He was the project director for the UN High-Level Panel on Financing for Development (the Zedillo Report) in 2001. He was also on leave as Chief Economist for South Asia at the World Bank during 1996-99. He was an adviser to the International Monetary Fund from 1972 to 1974 and Economic Consultant to the UK Treasury from 1968 to 1970.

He has been an Economics professor at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (1978–81), University of Warwick (1970–77), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1967, 1980), University of York (1963–68) and Princeton University (1962–63).