Countries come in all shapes and sizes, but unfortunately the policies of the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund do not, an Eastern graduate said Wednesday.

Richard Grabowski, current professor and chair of the economics department at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, presented the lecture “Development and Policy: One Size Fits All?” in Lumpkin Hall Wednesday afternoon.

Grabowski started off with his mother’s philosophy of buying clothes.

“My parents were frugal with a capital F,” he said. “They weren’t poor, just frugal.”

Grabowksi’s mother always bought her son’s clothes at least one size too big so he could grow into them and they would last longer. But Grabowski said “they never seem to fit.”

That idea brought him to the point of his lecture that one set of policies will not fit all countries.

If nations want financial help from the WTO and IMF, they are forced to follow a set of guidelines. This recipe for economic success was called The Washington Consensus, which represented the set of common policies as ways to make a country wealthy.

There were six rules a country must follow, Grabowski said. To begin with, countries must balance their budgets and they cannot spend too much. Countries should show monetary restraint because their money supply should not grow too rapidly.

“If it does grow fast there will be a better economy, but it causes inflation,” Grabowski said.

There should be free markets so one country may trade freely with another. Countries should also have small governments, financial liberalization and finally strong property rights Grabowski said.

“If you do these things your country will become wealthy whether it’s India or Brazil,” he noted.

A few more policies, such as democracy and a banking system like the United States, were added to this recipe.