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Background In the past several decades, the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have transitioned priorities from rebuilding European and Asian countries to decreasing poverty in developing countries. In addition, they evolved to be the world’s main financial sponsor to healthcare-related projects. Policies of these organizations forced some structural adjustment policies on many developing countries that resulted in negative consequences. This piece examines the impact of the changing policies of WB and IMF on the health of vulnerable populations and suggests potential recommendations for future improvements. Findings Privatization of health services has become common around the world especially in the developing countries. Several reports documented negative effects of privatization on healthcare systems and vulnerable populations. Countries that received loans from the WB to privatize its social security system, for example Mexico, had drastic changes in the conditions of health. Public sector organizations faced budget reductions that led to an erosion of healthcare services, increased rates of unemployment, and lack of insurance of low-income people. The IMF’s monetarist strategies towards prioritizing fiscal restraint (low budget deficits) and price stability (low inflation) negatively impacted low-income people and increased the inequity in access to health care. The present policies of these two organizations that focus on health system strengthening (HSS), and specifically incorporating existing vertical programs into health systems, had some critics. These programs, though many were successful, might result in adverse unintended effects for the health system and non-targeted populations. Some of the developing countries are unable to implement HSS projects properly. Conclusions Both the past and the present policies of the WB and the IMF had adverse consequences on the health systems in developing countries. These policies should be re-considered. Developing countries should implement strategies to increase quality of care and improve equity in access to healthcare. Time-limited vertical programs should be developed carefully to avoid adverse unintended effects for the health system and non-targeted populations. Strategies at both operational and strategic levels to improve relations between the vertical and horizontal basics of the system should be adopted.

Urban spatial scale and structural adjustment can reduce comprehensive energy consumption in cities. Adjusting land use and transportation structure between workplace and residence can direct the migration of industrial and commercial enterprises and associated residents, forming a new urban structure that will improve the efficiency of commuting, reduce delays, relieve congestion, and cut energy consumption.

China continued its 2012 economic development momentum in 2013 and is expected to have an increase of 7.6 % in economic growth and 2.5 % rise in CPI this year. It will continue to face the pressure from structural slowdown and many challenges in 2014. Only through stabilizing fiscal and financial structures to gradually release accumulated risks could economic structural adjustment be smoothly achieved. Therefore, the year 2014 will be another year for economic structural adjustment, reform promotion, steady growth achievement and risk control and management. The long-term economic growth in 2014–2018 will undergo a transformation from structural acceleration during the period of industrialization to structural deceleration during that of urbanization. Such transformation is characterized by a series of supply-side variables such as demographic change, urbanization, increasing attention to social welfare, which will dominate China’s economic growth rate in the future. It is estimated that, according to an analysis of the scenario, the simulation value for China’s potential economic growth rate in 2013–2018 is 6.4 %. From the assessment of sustainable development and transformation and the upgrading of China’s provinces, regions and municipalities, improvements in the index for the prospect of development and continuous enhancement in the quality of economic growth sustainability for all of China’s provinces, regions and municipalities has been found; however, some setbacks, or even drops, were found in the same index for central and western China as well as for China on the whole. China’s current transformation from industrialization to urbanization corresponds to the great importance of indicators such as the level of urbanization and insurance for endowment, unemployment and medical care and other indicators which are closely related to urbanization. In view of the conditions of economic development in 2013 and the long-term challenges for China’s economic development from 2014 to 2018, it is necessary to adopt supply-side macroeconomic management polices to tackle the decrease in its potential economic growth rate; these policies include (a) refining the competitive market, (b) improving the relative price system, (c) the transformation of its mobilized economy, (d) the enhancement of the efficiency of its structural transformation, (e) decrease in the input cost of supply elements and (f) the establishment of a social security system suitable for conditions all over China China’s national conditions.

Today there is a key question that lurks behind any consideration of Europe and its cities: is this foundation core zone of the modern world-system showing symptoms of dropping out of the contemporary core zone? It certainly appears that in the period of crises since 2008, Europe has been falling behind other major world-regions. Dubbed the “austerity region” of the world, such an interpretation sees Europe as the first part of the world-economy core to be subject to what are effectively structural adjustment programmes, largely self-imposed but still resulting in a process of peripheralization. Although uneven in impact, this is clearly a result of Europe’s states failing to adequately manage and regulate the economic activities within their territories. However it is far too soon to say whether such a monumental global economic shift is happening but we can investigate the current unevenness of economic globalization amongst European states. We compare three of these states that represent different degrees of potential peripheralization: Spain showing the stronger symptoms, Germany with least symptoms, and Britain somewhere in between. Our study is based upon an original analysis of advanced producer services that combines comparisons between countries and relations between cities.

In this chapter a CGE model (the CGE mini model) is presented. The model is simple enough to be presented in a few pages and yet complicated enough to demonstrate the application of the general CGE structure. In short, the focus of this chapter is to provide examples of structural adjustment in an open economy. The numerical applications of this chapter will be an examination of the sensitivity of the model to systematic variation in key variables of the adjustment process. Here we emphasise the effect of changes (government intervention) in the fixed rate of real exchange and growth in the capital stock.

Structural adjustment has played an important role in Irish agriculture over time as the number of farms decrease, the amount of labour decreases and the amount of food produced increases; between 1971 and 2005 the number of farms decreased from 228,000 to 133,000 (CSO Farm Structures Survey). In parallel the sector has seen large productivity gains so that the actual volume of food produced has increased despite lower labour input. Efforts to increase productivity in Agriculture go back centuries to the Agricultural Revolution and was an important focus of development policy in Ireland since Independence (Kennedy et al. 68) and although stagnant until after the second world was, a number of government programs saw agricultural output treble between 1950 and 1972 (ibid: 69). Output increased by 20 % between joining the EEC in 1972 and 1984 (ibid: 83). Boyle (1987) using total factor productivity indices found that there was a 1 % increase in productivity per annum over the period 1960–1980. Bureau et al. (1991) found that total factor productivity grew at an annual rate of 1.35 % between 1973 and 1989, while O’Neill et al. (2002:23) found that productivity only grew at 0.7 % per annum in the 1990s. Newman and Matthews (2007) found that total factor productivity growth was 1.5 % per annum in the 1980s and 0.7 % in the 1990s.

During the past two decades, many African countries have adopted competition policy as an important instrument of economic and, more specifically, market governance. The proliferation of competition policy regimes in Africa has taken place during a phase of broad-based economic liberalisation, including trade liberalisation, and domestic economic reforms such as privatisation. In some cases, these reforms were part of structural adjustment programmes, were supported by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and in other cases the economic adjustment programmes were homegrown. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was established in 1995 after the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral trade negotiations. The first WTO Ministerial Conference, held in Singapore in 1996, brought new generation trade issues, including competition policy, on to the multilateral trade agenda. However, at the 2003 Cancun Ministerial Conference, competition was dropped from the Doha Development Agenda, following debates among developing countries about the benefits of a competition regime. Despite the fact that competition no longer features on the multilateral trade agenda, many regional trade agreements include provisions on competition. In many cases, the provisions cover cooperation in competition enforcement. Perhaps the most important experience to date has been in the context of the negotiations with the European Union to conclude Economic Partnership Agreements. Many countries have still to conclude these negotiations; the provisions being discussed focus specifically on cooperation in enforcement. However, in Africa, there are several regional integration arrangements that provide for a regional competition law and the establishment of a regional competition authority.

This chapter considers the innovation dynamics of the European automotive industry in selected countries. Key elements concern the intensity of patenting networks. The role of innovation dynamics differs across countries, which can be explained in terms of headquarter status, the vertical integration of the sector, and the overall structural adjustment. A better regional R&D activity tends to stimulate regional economic development. In this context, clusters become more important because these constructs are an instrument in promoting innovations, industrial development, industrial competitiveness, and growth. This is why we apply social network analysis methods to describe and measure the evolution of cooperation and application networks in selected automotive clusters in Germany and Austria. Scientist mobility of inventors and the cooperation of applicants lead to knowledge spillovers. These spillovers have a stimulating effect on innovative activity. To measure these effects, we use patents of the European Patent Office (EPO), namely, for 1994–2007. Social network analysis turns out to be quite useful in understanding the innovation dynamics in European cluster regions. Thus, we can draw some conclusions for the supply-side dynamics in the EU single market and the automotive industry, respectively.

Government green investment is a pre-condition and foundation for the whole country’s green development. It provides guidance to corporate sector’s green production, people’s green consumption, and ecological environment protection. During the 11th Five-Year Plan, under the guidance of scientific concept of development, all levels of government, aiming to “save energy and reduce pollution”, increased green investment to promote the construction of a resource-conserving and environment-friendly society, in order to push the structural adjustment and transform of the national economy.

The EU is the world’s largest market, with vast natural, technological and human resources. It encompasses 27 countries and about 500 million people with different needs to be satisfied and resources to offer. The EU is the largest trading bloc of countries of the world. The total trade turnover with other countries of the world and the intra-trade among the EU member states makes up about 40% of global trade. The flows of foreign direct investments are closely connected to the trade patterns. The EU member states also compete strongly to attract investment that can yield benefit from the potential of these resources.

The development of trade accelerates economic growth, provides stimulus to new forms of productivity, enhances specialization, and leads to a more rapid pace of job creation. The expansion of free trade promotes inflow of goods and services, the increase of competition in domestic markets, access to a new markets, as well as the dissemination of knowledge and technologies. The share of merchandise trade relative to value added is growing dramatically in the world, and is characterizing the integration of the global economy through trade.

Olga Nosova’s paper essentially provides a descriptive stocktaking of the development of Russia’s foreign trade, its commodity structure and its geographical direction during the first decade of systemic transformation. The author emphasizes the fundamental importance of opening up Russia’s transition economy and the benefits that can be gained through increasing productivity, enhanced specialization, mass production, the import of knowledge and new technologies, access to new markets as well as enhanced competition in domestic markets.

The role of regions in national economies has changed significantly in recent times as a result of globalization and structural adjustment. Understanding these processes of change is crucial for undertaking regional economic analysis and in planning for regional development.

Rarely have modern labor markets witnessed wage increases so rapid as in Eastern Germany following the events of November 1989. In the first five years after the unification, nominal wages rose by more than 200 percent and doubled in purchasing power. Measured in terms of the output that labor is used to produce, wages rose by almost 350 percent. Substantial disagreement continues to characterize the discussion of the effects of high wages in the five new German states. On the one hand, the Bundesbank, the Sachverst andigenrat (Council of Economic Advisors), and major economic research institutes have argued that moderate wage settlements would have been essential for accelerating the process of structural change. According to this position, steep wage increases retarded the retooling of the eastern German economy. Trade unions, in contrast, have replied that high wages were necessary precisely to guarantee that the forces of structural change were brought to bear on industry and to promote investment in skills.

The breakdown of the economies in eastern Europe is probably one of the most important economic events of this century. Providing an idea of the potential time path of transformation economies and the consequences of different policy strategies is a major challenge for economic theory. This is especially true since comparable events are hard to find in economic history.2 There seems to be a broad consensus among economists concerning the important elements of the transformation process. These aspects include institutional reforms, price liberalization, privatization of state-owned enterprises, the creation of financial systems and capital markets, trade liberalization, and the reorganization of labor markets.3 Another aspect is the problem of timing and sequencing of policies in the initial period of transformation.4 Given this variety of issues research about the transformation is often restricted to be partial in nature. Therefore a comprehensive as well as long run theory of transformation seems not to be at hand.

With the Maastricht Treaty signed on February 7, 1992, the EC member countries seemed to be heading not only for the single market as of January 1, 1993, but also towards monetary union by the end of the 1990s. However, within months the EC was facing (i) a confidence crisis on the side of market participants, (ii) an economic policy crisis in the sense of diverging views on the desired policy course in major EC countries and (iii) a growing concern that too rigid fiscal policy convergence criteria of the Maastricht Treaty would restrict the room to maneuver at the start of single market. The start of the single market was surprisingly characterized by slow growth and strong pressures for structural adjustment in all EC countries.

The breakdown of the political regime of the German Democratic Republic and the ensuing German unification have been completely unexpected. The sudden regime change and the design of transformation policies profited neither from a coherent theoretical blueprint nor from concrete preparations in specific policy areas. Thus, it has been tempting to revert to the experience of the “economic miracle” of postwar Germany in the early 1950s as guidance for practical policies. But the hope for repeating the former rapid and self-sustained growth performance was based on false assumptions and analogies and led to unrealistic expectations. The political promise to create “blooming landscapes” within a few years could not be realized. Today, the initial euphoric expectations have been replaced by disillusion and sometimes even by resignation, at least in East Germany.

The paper by Dr. Schnabel is well-written and well organized. It is a comprehensive presentation of three important aspects of reform in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR): (1) the need for restructuring and privatization; (2) the daunting task of the Treuhandanstalt, and (3) the various strategies that can be pursued to privatize the state owned enterprises in the GDR.

The “White Paper” of December 1993, as mentioned, emphasizes to two main areas: infrastructure policy and, through a sectoral adjustment policy, technology and research promotion. The Small and Medium Enterprises’ (SME’s) actions can be considered as a part of the second set of measures.

Since October 3, 1990, West and East Germany are united, after having been politically separated for more than four decades by the iron curtain. In some respects - particularly from an economic point of view - another date might be even more important - since July 1, 1990, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) are closely connected by an economic, monetary and social union. Although the State Treaty establishing the intra-German union represented but an intermediate step towards complete political unification, it heralded the end of the socialist “command economy” and its transition into the kind of “social market economy” established in West Germany more than forty years ago.

The so-called industrial countries are by no means industrial any more. For the average age, employment in the industrial sector accounts for less than 40 percent of total employment in the OECD countries; in the United States it accounts for even less than 20 percent. The reasons behind the ongoing shifts from manufacturing to services are quite well understood. It seems less clear, however, how structural adjustment in the economy as a whole affects regional development within countries. It is the basic purpose of this paper to shed some light on the relationship between structural change at the aggregate level and the economic performance of urban and rural areas. It concentrates on West German experience, but the general conclusions to be drawn from the analysis presented here can probably be applied to other countries as well.

From 1980 to 1987, the share of the Asian NIEs (4 countries) increased from 1.1% to 1.8%, and the trade volume from 4.1% to 6.7%. The group’s trade balance was transformed from a deficit of 11.6 billion dollars to a surplus of 22.9 billion dollars.

The Finnish economy fell from its long-term growth path in the 70’s. The average annual growth rate of GDP was annually 4.6 percent until 1975. In 1976–1983 the growth rate was 2.9 percent. The period from 1975 until today is too short to justify the conclusion that the long-term growth rate has also decreased. We can assume that, after a period of smooth and rapid growth, the Finnish economy was faced with structural adjustments in connection with the marked changes in the relative price of oil . How long a period of time will these adjustments related to overall structural changes in the world economy take? And, will there be again a period of smooth and rapid growth in the future? These are interesting questions, but they are hard to answer for the present.

From perspectives represented in this volume, contemporary economics may be regarded as a mature discipline. It has brought the state of the art close to the boundaries of the predominant paradigm. Breaking through these boundaries implies a search for alternatives or at least some alterations to this paradigm. Many of the contributions contained herein spring from such ambitions. The different chapters consist of various attempts to permeate the boundaries or to open up new pathways within the existing paradigm, and in several cases to break with the established tradition.

Professor Thimm’s paper outlines German codetermination procedures and then turns to the steel industry and steel crisis in order to analyse the working of codetermination in this special case. Thimm manages to convey a lot of useful and interesting information on the steel crisis, on the problems of structural change, and on codetermination. I will not try to discuss all aspects covered in the paper (though some give rise to interesting disputes on the problems of structural adjustment), but will concentrate on codetermination and Thimm’s treatment of it.

The declining trend of GDP growth, accompanied by a similar tendency in labor productivity and increasing evidence of structural deficiencies in the sectoral composition of GDP, has become a matter of increasing concern for economic policy in Austria. We present empirical evidence and some causal interpretations about structural adjustment, changes in productivity and capital accumulation that have occurred over the past 20 years in the Austrian economy. Extending previous work on Austrian labor productivity (Bayer, 1983; Mitter and Skolka, 1984), we apply a growth accounting framework (Bally, 1981; Nadiri, 1980) to obtain empirical evidence about sectoral changes in productivity.

Before probing more deeply and more systematically into theoretical and empirical analysis, we close this introductory part with some views on the structural adjustment problems faced by Swiss industry. The views presented here were expressed by top managers from industry, banking, trading and consulting.1

The lion’s share of foreign exchange is earned by exporting only one or two primary commodities in a group of countries with small and open economies.1 While some of them find structural adjustment to an appreciating real exchange rate — brought about by the exploitation of newly-found natural resources or by a secular commodity price hike — painful,2 the “commodity problem” of old non-oil exporting countries within the group is rather related to instability of world commodity prices and Uncertainty about future price trends.3 Unless caused by supply shifts of the country in question, fluctuating world commodity prices get transmitted into fluctuating export earnings. These are a major potential source for macroeconomic disturbances in the open economy.

The problems posed by a shortfall in foreign exchange have received great attention recently, much of it focused on the often painful measures developing countries impose to cope with the shortfall. This paper shows how a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model that is essentially Walrasian can be modified to reflect some of the more common adjustment mechanisms to which developing countries often resort. The adjustment measures often do not rely on price adjustment and so represent important departures from the Walrasian spirit of the model. In particular, the paper considers the welfare effects of exchange rate, import premium, and quantity rationing adjustment mechanisms. The model also incorporates ‘rent seeking’ activities generated by rationing mechanisms. The numerical results, using data for Turkey, show that welfare losses are smallest when the exchange rate is free to clear the foreign exchange market and largest for quantity rationing. The costs associated with rent seeking are the most important source of welfare loss, far outweighing allocational inefficiencies arising from the use of quantity rationing.