Uganda, Sept. 25 -- My thesis for last week's column was that despite our best efforts to follow the "Washington Consensus", the reforms we had undertaken had not yielded the most optimal outcomes for our economy.
In the language of economists, we had hoped for a pareto improvement in the physical and social conditions of many people. (A pareto improvement is a condition on the way to pareto efficiency whereby goods can be re-allocated to make at least one person better off without making any other individual worse off.)
By arguing that 'government had no business doing business', we had (relatively speaking) made many individuals worse off through the social costs of adjustment. More pointedly, we had chosen (or been forced to choose) th...