Markets hold significant power to create or combat poverty. Increasingly, international development initiatives focused on economic growth and/or poverty alleviation are guiding markets toward working better for the poor. These initiatives are pushing for significant changes in the business-enabling environment to open markets for private-sector growth and small enterprise (SE) participation. They are enhancing the competitiveness of developing-country economies by linking small-scale producers with supply chains that sell to global markets. They are enabling small-scale producers to reap more rewards from global market participation by finding commercial solutions to the barriers that exclude small-scale producers from the benefits of higher value markets. And they are promoting program and policy shifts that help the poor improve health, sanitation, education, and other areas of their lives by supporting local market systems in which small enterprises play a critical delivery role.

These poverty eradication initiatives fall under the broad banner of Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P), the focus of the 2004–5 Reader. This document " Making Markets Work for the Poor " presents the M4P framework and shares practical lessons from a wide range of development experiences that illuminate workable paths to pro-poor market development.

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