Characterization of Development Models and Its Impact on Policy Implementation

The Global Models to explain human development on the planet have been conceived to be important and useful. They are the result of simulation methodologies and paradigms for viewing the world in their macro dynamics, considering a large number of possible causes of the problems that arise, and that, based on historical data, shows how the world will behave in a determined future in different possible scenarios. They were born due to the global concern about the impact human actions have on the environment, for the unsustainability of population and economic growth and for the disappointing results of recurrently approved government's programs to combat those problems. The aim of the global models is to provide the necessary tools to formulate alternative answers for humanity steer toward the best-case scenario. They have made many, but others need to be developed that serve to analyze specific contexts such as South America or Colombia. This work takes stock of a representative set of global models of the past sixty years to characterize and identify the paradigms and assumptions that support them, their structures, results and, particularly, components that may be useful for future design and construction of a system dynamics model to study the performance of the implementation of development policies.