Sachs‘ shock therapy notion views liberalisation as a necessary evil, a fast–as well as nasty–way to achieve economic stabilisation.

The first instance of shock therapy were the neoliberal pro-market reforms of Chile in 1975, carried out after the military coup by Augusto Pinochet. The reforms, dubbed a shock policy at the time by Milton Friedman, were based on the liberal economic ideas centred around the University of Chicago. Many of the Chilean economists who drafted the reforms came from there and were collectively dubbed the „Chicago Boys“.