Structural Adjustment Model Research Articles

Exploring the green and low-carbon development pathway for an energy-intensive industrial park in China

Energy-intensive industrial parks (IPs) with the distinct characteristics of high energy consumption, substantial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and huge pollution, are facing enormous pressure to realize the synergistic mitigation of GHG and air pollutants. Exploring the green and low-carbon transformation of energy-intensive IPs is urgently required to achieve the dual strategies of “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality” and “Beautiful China”. Taking a typical energy-intensive industrial park (IP) in Henan Province—the Red Flag Cannel Industrial Park (RFCP) as the research object, an integrated evaluation framework including multi-objective optimization model alongside the synergistic mitigation potential of carbon and air pollutant emissions, was established in the energy-intensive IPs. Five scenarios were designed to quantify the GHG and air pollutant mitigation potential, while synergistic emission reduction control effects were evaluated under four measures of industrial structure adjustment, energy structure adjustment, energy efficiency improvement, and industrial symbiosis. The scenario analysis indicates that the integrated scenario (S4) shows the most significant emission reduction potential by 2030. Compared to the baseline scenario (S0), the GHG emission reduction is 11.66 Mt CO2eq (53% reduction rate), and the emission reduction rate of air pollutants ranges from 38% to 69% in S4. The findings indicate that industrial structure adjustment and energy structure adjustment are the primary measures for reducing GHG and air pollutants of IPs. Additionally, the evaluation of synergistic effect demonstrates that industrial structure adjustment shows the most significant synergistic effect on GHG and air pollutant by 2030. Finally, some policy recommendations regarding the transformation direction of energy-intensive IPs were proposed. This study will provide valuable references for the green and low-carbon development of energy-intensive IPs.

Realizing synergy between pollution reduction and carbon mitigation in industrial parks: From model development to tool application

Promoting the synergy between carbon mitigation and pollution reduction (SCMPR) is pivotal for global green and sustainable development. Industrial parks, as crucial economic hubs, require effective SCMPR strategies considering land, economy, and the environment, but present research seldom proposes methods that consider multiple factors and stakeholders together and fit for practical application. Given this, this study establishes a multi-factor industrial structural adjustment model for industrial parks incorporating scenario analysis to unveil optimal adjustment schemes and then develops an efficient spreadsheet tool based on the model. The model results convincingly fulfill SCMPR requirement after applying to a typical industrial park: After adjustments, 50 main industries in the park can achieve SCMPR targets, with carbon intensity and total phosphorous intensity predicted to achieve relative decoupling and other regular pollutant emissions anticipated to absolute decoupling by 2030. The proposed optimal scheme indicates that wastewater, waste gas, and solid waste volumes in the park will rise by 39%–54% by 2025 and 76%–113% from 2025 to 2030, and then translate into a 50% increase in waste treatment costs by 2025 and a subsequent 98% increase by 2030. The carbon intensity of the park will decrease from 154 tonnes of CO2 per million Chinese Yuan in 2020 to 94 in 2030. The results culminate in three strategic recommendations for industrial parks: (1) prioritize reducing total pollutant emissions and carbon intensity, (2) customize carbon mitigation and pollution reduction strategies for each industry, and (3) regulate material and energy flows at multiple levels. This study can provide a pragmatic tool for industrial parks to make science-based decision-making toward dual carbon goals.

The Reduction of Inequality in Latin America during 2000–2010: A Path to Development?

After implementation of the structural adjustment model in the region since the 1990s, we see that the benefits to economic growth and social equality were mediocre, even if there was a recovery cycle between 2004 and 2008, although Latin America presents a slight flexibility in inequality with positive trends in this period. There is, today, more centralization with regard to the social question, because Latin America does not present a shift of its workforce from less productive to more efficient activities. Therefore, this article is concerned with analyzing the impact of social policies in the last decade, as compared to the change in the economic structure. This article shows that for ECLA vision authors, the transformation of the productive structure is important to development. Although the region showed improvement with regard to inequality, poverty levels and other changes, an economic structure that is more dynamic and closer to the international technological border has not yet been achieved.

Simulating dynamic urban expansion at regional scale in Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan Metropolitan Area

Dynamic urban expansion simulation at regional scale is one of the important research methodologies in Land Use/Cover Change (LUCC) and global environmental change influenced by urbanization. However, previous studies indicate that the single urban expansion simulation for future scenarios at local scale cannot meet the requirements for characterizing and interpreting the interactive mechanisms of regional urbanization and global environmental change. This study constructed a regional Dynamic Urban Expansion Model (Reg-DUEM) suitable for different scenarios by integrating the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Cellular Automaton (CA) model. Firstly we analyzed the temporal and spatial characteristics of urban expansion and acquired a prior knowledge rules using land use/cover change datasets of Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan metropolitan area. The future urban expansion under different scenarios is then simulated based on a baseline model, economic models, policy models and the structural adjustment model. The results indicate that Reg-DUEM has good reliability for a non-linear expansion simulation at regional scale influenced by macro-policies. The simulating results show that future urban expansion patterns from different scenarios of the metropolitan area have the tremendous spatio-temporal differences. Future urban expansion will shift quickly from Beijing metropolis to the periphery of Tianjin and Tangshan city along coastal belt.

Capacidades tecnológicas agroalimentarias de México en el modelo sustitutivo y en el modelo liberalizador

Comparando los resultados de producción y de comercio exterior del sector agropecuario y de la industria alimentaria mexicanas se demuestra que: a) la acumulación de capacidades productivas y tecnológicas fue superior en el modelo sustitutivo de importaciones que en el actual de ajuste estructural y liberalizador, y que, b) la actual debilidad productiva y tecnológica del conjunto alimentario mexicano radica en que se sigue aplicando la misma política tecnológica del antiguo modelo sustitutivo, la cual contradice al propio modelo liberalizador y choca con el ambiente tecnológico y los modos de competencia actuales. Para superar la debilidad productiva y tecnológica del conjunto alimentario se propone: 1) colocar a la suficiencia alimentaria como factor aglutinador (objetivo nacional) de los esfuerzos tecnológicos, sin descuido de la promoción de exportaciones; y 2) designar al Estado como el agente impulsor principal que coordine y aliente el cambio tecnológico y no sólo el cambio técnico.

Modelo de ecuaciones estructurales para predecir el bienestar y la dependencia funcional en adultos mayores de la República Dominicana

To produce a multivariate structural model that explains functional dependence and well-being in terms of certain related sociodemographic factors among elderly adults in the Dominican Republic. A cross-sectional study that surveyed a sample of 1,397 individuals 65 or more years of age, representing the Dominican Republic's elderly population. Those surveyed were asked for sociodemographic information (sex, age, level of education, employment status, and income level), data needed to determine their Barthel Index, and responses to questions from Ryff's Scale of Psychological Well-being. Three structural equation models were used to identify relationships among the key variables. The most fitting structural adjustment model linked sociodemographics to the ability to perform basic activities of daily living (BADL) and the Ryff's Scale of Psychological Well-being, without suggesting latent factors. With regard to endogenous variables, the model's predictive power was weak. Age was negatively associated with some areas of well-being and with the ability to perform BADL; sex was related to the area of positive relationships with others; and educational level positively influenced environment, personal growth, and having a sense of purpose, as well as the ability to perform BADL. The proven models provide information necessary for developing policies aimed at two levels of coordinated action: promoting autonomy among elderly adults and expanding enrollment in formal education programs. These results support efforts to increase investment in social policies.

Más allá de las mitologías: derechos y responsabilidades en la era de los poderes supranacionales

We need security, but not abstract economic security. Why do we want security? Because we are citizens, and citizenship must hold the right to an adequate job, housing, and nutrition. Nevertheless, this is not the sense in which the term is often employed in capitalist times. Capitalism is based on the logic of maximization of benefi t. To speak about democracy and human rights necessarily involves rethinking this situation. We have to reassert our priorities such as protection of the environment, fairness, and equity among nations. All of this is a re- sponse to longer term issues, principally the failure of neoclassical economy to deliver long term security, the global environmental crisis, and the plight of the poor. In a few words, it is necessary an alternative model of structural adjustment in the framework of a new logic of responsibility.

Agricultural expansion and deforestation in lowland Bolivia: the import substitution versus the structural adjustment model

This paper analyzes the influence that both policies and markets have on driving forest conversion to agricultural land use focusing on the Bolivian case. It assesses the effects that two models of economic development have had on prompting agricultural expansion, and hence deforestation in lowland Bolivia. The first model, of economic diversification and import substitution, initiated in the early 1950s, stimulated the occupation of forestlands for agricultural expansion through colonization, and incentives to developing a medium and large-scale agriculture. The second model of development, initiated in the mid-1980s, prompted by structural adjustment policies, led to an intense process of agrarian change in the lowlands, mainly by connecting the agricultural frontier to the international market of commodities, particularly soybeans. The move from an import substitution industrialization model to another based on economic liberalization, even though it had positive implications on stimulating agricultural growth, has led to accelerate the pace of deforestation in lowland Bolivia, which has a larger contribution of medium and large-scale agriculture. This paper moves forward the debate about deforestation in Bolivia by making explicit connections between some analytical assessments on land-use/cover change and empirical evidences about forest removal in a five-decades period.

Global economy, metropolitan dynamics and urban policies in Mexico

This paper throws some light on the complex links between economic growth and the process of urbanization in Mexico in the 1960–1995 period, as well as on the changes in urban and regional policies. In order to clarify this historical relationship, the analysis focuses on the evolution of the Mexican system of cities according to their size, and it is divided into three subperiods: (i) the 1960–1980 decades, characterized by a swift economic growth; (ii) the 1980–1990 lost decade of a deep economic crisis; (iii) the partial economic recovery of 1990–1995. It is concluded that in the last stage, when the neoliberal or structural adjustment model consolidated, the urban system clearly moved towards a polycentric concentration in a very few metropolises, standing out the emerging megalopolitan cluster of Mexico City. Furthermore, it is argued that the abdication of the Federal Government to plan the system of cities will intensify the concentration process and the problématique of urban Mexico.

Theories of institutions and economic reform in Africa

The paper presents and critically examines the theories of institutions that can be used as a guide to economic reform in Africa. Three approaches to institutions are initially discussed: the model of structural adjustment, new institutional economics and the old institutionalist tradition. Five institutions related to the development of markets in Africa are examined from the three perspectives. The institutions include property rights (including their role in agriculture), money and financial institutions, prices and markets, firms and industrial organization, and markets and states. The main conclusion of the paper is that structural adjustment due to its neoclassical roots is basically ainstitutional and therefore ill-equipped to promote the development of markets in Africa. While new institutionalism provides interesting insights, it is also limited by its neoclassical economic foundations. Thus if African governments desire to promote market reform they would be best advised to consult the old institutionalist literature, particularly the very interesting recent work of proponents of this tradition.

The world bank and the application of Asian industrial policy to Africa: Theoretical considerations

AbstractThe paper discusses two general difficulties in drawing lessons from Asian industrialization for Africa, the problem of identification and the problem of reproducibility. The paper criticizes the World Bank/neoclassical model's attempt to solve the identification problem. Using examples from a number of East and Southeast Asian countries the paper argues that the model's export‐oriented vs import‐substitution dichotomy is a false one, that government policy was not neutral but active, interventionist and ‘distorting’, often with positive results, and that statist policies ensured that agriculture supported labour‐intensive industrialization. It also points out that the problem of reproducibility, which is complicated by structural and historical dimensions, is largely ignored by the World Bank/neoclassical model. This raises serious doubts about the usefulness of the World Bank's model of structural adjustment as it applies to Africa, since it is based on a misinterpretation of the factors responsible for industrialization in Asia.

Unequal alliance: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Philippines

In this seminal work, U.S. development specialist Robin Broad chronicles the Philippine experiment with the structural adjustment model of development espoused by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Can the East Asian model of development be generalized? a comment

As little as three years ago before Mexico led the Latin American march to debt renegotiations the East Asian development experience was generally viewed as something of an annoying curiosum in the South. Admittedly, the so-called Gang of Four had achieved rapid growth even growth with equity during the 1960s and 1970s by shifting from import substitution to export-oriented policies; but they were too ‘special’so the argument ran -in terms of their culture, their size, their status as United States protectorates. to be of much relevance to the majority of Latin American and other Asian developing countries. The advent of the debt and adjustment crisis of the 1980s has changed the scenario just a bit. There persists substantial annoyance with the preachings of some scholars (and institutions) who seem to be offering a standard simple-minded panacea for widely varying and always complicated individual country situations. But there is also in evidence greater interest in the East Asian experience. especially that of Taiwan and South Korea, given their demonstrated greater capacity to adjust to the post-197Y deterioration of the international environment and not simply by cutting back imports and growth, but also by capturing a larger share of the world’s dwindling export markets. This interest has spread even into such unlikely places as UNCTAD and ECLA and given rise to a burst of academic conferences analyzing the post-war experience of the East Asian and Latin American NICs in a comparative context. It has also led to the grudging admission by at least some influential Southern observers that. cultural differences aside, the East Asians did not really enjoy substantial ‘special’ advantages in their treatment by the North, either in the form of greater ‘net” foreign capital inflows or exemption from the mushrooming arsenal of neoprotectionist devices. The jury is still out on whether the world is really working its way out of the general LDC debt crisis or has merely managed to postpone it. The answer, I believe, depends heavily on whether or not the debate continues to focus on the choice between greater short-term austerity (supported by the IMF and the creditors) and greater short-term liquidity (supported by UNCTAD and the debtors) instead of on how to achieve longer term structural adjustments with the help of additional longer term liquidity. That is why I am almost as skeptical about Mexico’s being held up as ‘the’ model of structural adjustment as I am about the Philippines. In my view, it will take country-by-country assessments of what is wrong with the basic economic structure and the policy mix which has prevented most LDCs from ‘rolling with the punches’ delivered by the deteriorating international environment of the 1970s and early 1980s. If these questions are not asked. and answered, I am afraid that the substantial human as well as firiancial costs of the current crisis will have been incurred in vain and that we will all have to do it again at a later date. In the context of such a country-by-country reassessment of the structural rules of the game, and of the potential role of foreign capital, the relevance or irrelevance of the East Asian experience remains, I believe, an important, if by no means dominant, part of the landscape. Whether Latin America and other Asian NICs conclude that the demonstrated lack of dependability of the international environment dictates a return to a new and better form of import substitution or that their demonstrated superior adjustment capacity implies the need to borrow and adapt some of the open economy lessons of the East Asians is of the utmost importance at this critical point in history. It is for this reason that William Cline’s February 1982 article in this journal merits our attention. For it seems to be