It is also significant that the first wave was a pilot project, run by de Soto's Institute for Liberty and Democracy rather than the government. It was intended to demonstrate the feasibility of a rapid formalization program, the centerpiece of the neoliberal reforms adopted by the new government of Alberto Fujimori, whom de Soto initially served as a principal adviser. Anxious to raise both domestic political support and international development funds for the program, there would have been clear incentives to choose the right kinds of neighborhoods for the demonstration. … As we will see, this was only one possible way in which the project's need to demonstrate the truth of neoliberal economic theory entered into the kinds of economic knowledge it later helped produce.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1965