Rural restructuring is a process of reshaping socio-economic morphology and spatial pattern in rural territory in response to the changes of elements both in kernel system and external system of ...rural development, by optimally allocating and efficiently managing the material and non-material elements in the two systems. It aims at ultimately optimizing the structure and promoting the function within rural territorial system as well as realizing the coordination of structure and complementation of function between urban and rural territorial system. This paper establishes a theoretical framework of rural restructuring through elabo- rating the concept and connotations as well as analyzing the mechanism pushing forward rural restructuring based on the evolution of "elements-structure-function", and probes the approaches from the three aspects of spatial restructuring, economic restructuring and social restructuring. Besides, the authors argue that the study of rural restructuring in China in the future needs to focus on the aspects of long-term and multi-scale process and pattern, mechanism, regional models, rural planning technology system and standard, policy and institutional innovations concerning rural restructuring as well as the impacts of globalization on rural restructuring, in order to serve the current national strategic demands and cope with the changes of rural development elements in the process of urban-rural development transformation.
The article discusses mechanisms and policy that stimulate regional economic restructuring. Economic restructuring is conceptualised through the notion of path development. The article distinguishes ...four types of path development: the extension and upgrading of existing regional industries are two types, diversification of existing industries and the creation of new industry paths are the two others and more substantial path developments. A main idea in the article is that new path development requires industry actors who initiate new firms or innovation activities in existing firms, i.e. firm level agency, but that restructuring also requires action by actors operating in the regional support system, i.e. system level agency. System level agency, understood as actions or intervention to transform regional innovation systems to better support economic restructuring, is particularly important for the two most 'radical' types of restructuring, i.e. path diversification and creation, and in regions with thin and specialised knowledge and industrial structure.
Rapid and far-reaching development transition has triggered corresponding restructuring in rural China especially since the turn of the new millennium. Recently, there has been an increasing trend ...emphasizing regional resources in formulating rural development policy and restructuring rural areas. This paper analyzes the rural restructuring in China affected by the allocation and management of critical resources including human resource, land resource and capital, by establishing a theoretical framework of “elements-structure-function” of rural territorial system. It is argued that rural restructuring is a process of optimizing the allocation and management of the material and non-material elements affecting the development of rural areas and accomplishing the structure optimization and the function maximum of rural development system. Due to the constraints from the maintained urban–rural dualism of land ownership and household registration, the rapid rural restructuring under both globalization and the implementation of the national strategies on industrialization, urbanization, informatization and agricultural modernization, the changes of the allocation of critical resources have brought about many problems and challenges for the future development of rural China, such as the nonagriculturalization, non-grain preference and abandonment of farmland use together with the derelict and idle rural housing land, the weakening mainbody of rural development, the unfair urban–rural allocation of capital and its structural imbalance, and so on. Aiming at how to resolve the problems and adapt to the challenges, it is pivotal to restructure the rural development space, rural industry, and rural social organization and management mainbody. Furthermore, it is necessary to restructure the contours of state intervention in rural societies and economies and allocate and manage the critical resources affecting rural development, from the perspectives of integrating urban and rural resources, improving the efficiency of resources utilization, and fully understanding the influences of globalization on rural restructuring in China.
•Rapid development transition has triggered corresponding restructuring in rural China.•Analyzes rural restructuring in China affected by allocation and management of critical resources.•Emphasizes role of regional resources in formulating development policy and restructuring rural areas.•Restructures rural development space, rural industry, and rural social organization and management mainbody.•Fully understanding the influences of globalization on rural restructuring in China.
Currently, the functions of rural territories in metropolitan suburbs have been gradually evolved under rapid urbanization since the turn of the new millennium. Meanwhile, the socio-economic ...morphology and spatial pattern in the rural areas are undergoing dramatic restructuring. This paper takes the Huangshandian village in the suburb of Beijing as a case study area to carry out an empirical study on the process of rural restructuring by adopting the method of participatory rural assessment (PRA) and GIS technology. The results show that since 2000, the Huangshandian village has experienced different industrial transformations from traditional agriculture to the industries of primary processing and eco-tourism. The function of traditional agricultural production is declining gradually, and the industrial production, ecological culture and other multi-functional value of the rural territory have successively appeared. With the evolution and restructuring of socio-economic morphology, there are significant changes in the quantity, structure, and pattern of rural living, production and ecological space accordingly. The mutually reinforced and restrictive relationships among economic restructuring, spatial restructuring, and social restructuring have jointly driven the systematic development of the “natural-ecological-economic-social” systems and the comprehensive promotion of the “production-living-ecology-culture” functions. Based on the analysis of the process of rural restructuring of the Huangshandian village in the aspects of economic restructuring, spatial restructuring, and social restructuring, this paper puts forward some suggestions on land use policy and institutional innovations aiming at optimally allocating the land resources and promoting the rural restructuring in metropolitan suburbs, including accelerating the institutional framework design of rural land transfer, exploring the tourism land management system adapting to the new pattern of rural economy and pushing forward the re-use mechanism of abandoned industrial and mining land.
•The functions of rural territories have been gradually evolved under rapid urbanization.•It is necessary to restructure the rural socioeconomic morphology and spatial pattern.•Economic restructuring, spatial restructuring and social restructuring are mutually reinforced and restrictive.•Land and its utilization play an important role in promoting rural economic and social restructuring.•Rural restructuring relies on land use policy and institutional innovations.
Accelerating the nuclear fuel qualification process will rely on some combination of advanced modeling and simulation techniques with accelerated irradiation testing and separate effects experiments ...to enable the development of new fuel concepts in a shorter time frame. One of the key challenges to successfully leveraging accelerated irradiation tests will be understanding the artifacts that may be introduced with accelerated accumulation of dose and/or burnup. This work presents phase field (MARMOT) simulations of the evolution of representative 2D UO2 microstructures up to 40 MWd/kgU. Simulations were performed under both commercial light water reactor fuel conditions as well as those that would be expected for highly accelerated (~10x) burnup conditions similar to those used in the MiniFuel irradiations in Oak Ridge National Laboratory's High Flux Isotope Reactor. The phase field model was coupled with a discrete nucleation algorithm to model restructuring at high burnup. The effect of the different fission rates in both microstructures was investigated at two temperatures: 650°C and 800°C. The lower temperature simulations both showed an onset of restructuring at nearly 60 MWd/kgU. More extensive restructuring was obtained in the MiniFuel microstructure compared with that of the PWR fuel. At 800°C, no restructuring was obtained as a result of the thermally activated diffusion of Xe atoms and U vacancies to fission gas bubbles, which reduces the nucleation driving force. These results highlight the importance of using modeling and simulation tools to inform the environmental conditions during targeted accelerated irradiation tests to extract the most useful fuel performance data.
We show that pay is higher for chief executive officers (CEOs) with general managerial skills gathered during lifetime work experience. We use CEOs' résumés of Standard and Poor's 1,500 firms from ...1993 through 2007 to construct an index of general skills that are transferable across firms and industries. We estimate an annual pay premium for generalist CEOs (those with an index value above the median) of 19% relative to specialist CEOs, which represents nearly a million dollars per year. This relation is robust to the inclusion of firm- and CEO-level controls, including fixed effects. CEO pay increases the most when firms externally hire a new CEO and switch from a specialist to a generalist CEO. Furthermore, the pay premium is higher when CEOs are hired to perform complex tasks such as restructurings and acquisitions. Our findings provide direct evidence of the increased importance of general managerial skills over firm-specific human capital in the market for CEOs in the last decades.
The research results on the global problem of household debt growth, its causes, consequences, social context, and influence on the formation of aggregate demand are presented. It is substantiated ...that with the growth of debts, households are losing their share in aggregate demand, and the state is becoming an increasingly influential player compared to others due to the strengthening of fiscal and regulatory government influence. Facing the increasing debt pressure, households start reducing consumption, thus negatively affecting aggregate demand. The government, on its part, trying to improve the situation, increases subsidies and provides policies that encourage banks to restructure loans, develops restructuring programs, etc. These trends are proven to be of an urgent character and should not be routinized, in order not to distort the market environment or increase the direct influence of the state on purely market processes. The analysis of global experience, carried out in the article, shows that in the condition of economic destabilization debt restructuring is the only way to help the population out of the debt trap. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the ways to harmonize the accumulation of household debt through restructuring, to identify its market mechanisms, and to prove that the state should provide extensive assistance to households trying to overcome the debt trap. Three options for the state participation in the restructuring process have been identified: institutional participation (when the state only provides regulatory support); design and implementation of state restructuring programs; adoption of regulations on compulsory restructuring. New Ukrainian norms and regulations related to forced debt restructuring are analyzed, and their social context is proved to be contradictory. On the one hand, the adoption of corresponding laws became a significant step towards maintaining the social stability of the Ukrainian population against the background of the growing poverty and increasing total indebtedness of the people (even in the sphere of payments for public utility services), and the growing currency risks. On the other hand, Ukrainian market players often show moral hazards of non-compliance with the conditions of debt discipline, which have become part of the financial behavior, negatively affecting the general financial culture.
In this paper, I examine the effect of credit default swaps (CDSs) on the restructuring of distressed firms. Using a sample of U.S. distressed exchange offers during the period 2006–2011, I show that ...the participation rate among bondholders is significantly lower if the firm has CDSs traded on its debt. To address endogeneity concerns, I use the introduction of the Big Bang Protocol as a natural experiment. The results suggest that firms with CDSs find it difficult to reduce debt out of court. This is important because it can increase the likelihood of future bankruptcy, which is inefficient. The findings are consistent with the empty creditor hypothesis, which posits that bondholders who are hedged with CDSs are less likely to participate in a debt restructuring. The paper also contains direct evidence for the existence of empty creditors.
This paper was accepted by Amit Seru, finance
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Restructuring rural spaces brings about essential changes in the everyday lives of rural societies. Rural restructuring shapes and alters the image, identity, and, ultimately, the content and ...physical environment of the countryside. The trajectories of change vary widely, although the globalisation of rurality severely challenges some parts of rural areas, too. Peripheries, deprived, and remote settlements suffer from the effects and processes of restructuring, and their spatial representation also changes. In Central and Eastern European rural areas, the globalisation of the countryside started right after the political transition, in which these areas were left with a declining population, a collapsed economy, and inadequate infrastructure. In many cases, these disadvantaged settlements could not cope with the challenges of a market-based economy; furthermore, their geographical location and inability to join the labour market created disconnected spaces with low spatial and social mobility. As a result of such a vicious circle, residents in these areas experienced the destruction of local societies and a deteriorating physical environment, supplemented by an ageing population, and because of all these consequences, different spatial representations emerged in and about rurality.
This paper focuses on a disadvantaged, isolated rural area in Hungary, the Baranyai-Hegyhát micro-region. We assume that the changing nature of such rural areas affects local inhabitants' spatial imagination and representation. We surveyed to define values of spatial representation and social status, among other variables. In the evaluation, we compared survey indices and attempted to ascertain the types of spatial representation, social status, and their connections in the research area. As a main result, we found that spatial representations do not depend on spatial position but are strongly associated with social backgrounds.
•Processes of marginalisation can lead to perforation of rural settlement networks.•Spatial representation in a deprived, isolated area is not necessarily negative.•Low social status does not lead to negative representations of space.•Negative spatial representation is always compared with lower social status.•Settlements with low social status and low levels of representation are perforated.