Halving poverty incidence in developing countries by 2015 has become the centerpiece of the international development debate. The ability to reach this goal depends on the nature of public policies. While some consensus has been achieved over the last two decades about the development and social policies that reduce poverty, similar agreement is nowhere in sight for macroeconomic policies, and the discord has intensified with the liberalization of international capital movements and the intensification of financial crises.

This volume proposes some broad principles that should permit macroeconomically sustainable poverty reduction. While the ways of reaching this objective can only be country specific, the volume presents some broad principles that may inspire macroeconomic policy in different countries. Such principles include the adoption of policies for the ex-ante crisis avoidance and maintenance of a reasonable macroeconomic balance; retaining a competitive and stable real exchange rate encouraging investments in the labour-intensive tradable sector; low to moderate real interest rates; strong institutions for the regulation of the financial and banking sector; measures to mobilize domestic savings and speed up the accumulation of capital; trade liberalization that avoids a collapse of the import competing sectors, while removing any anti-export sector bias; and preservation of adequate pro-poor and pro-growth public expenditure during stabilization.