Most re cent contributions to disequilibrium theory have a high level of abstraction. Empirical studies explicitly based on disequilibrium are still relatively scarce. However, empirical macro economics anticipated the theoretical development, and amalgamated classical and Keynesian elements often without a clear-cut formal base. Now a theoretical integration of neo-classical and neo-Keynesian economics seems under way. There is a renewed interest in the micro-economic foundations of macroeconomics with a special focus on the behaviour of economic agents operating in non-clearing markets. In some instances these theoretical developments offer an ex post justification for empirical macro-economic practices. Generally however, they call for new ways of empirical macro-economic model building. This study operates on the border line between empirical macro economics and theoretical disequilibrium macro-economic theory. Our interest in macro-economic disequilibrium originates from the empirical side. Foreign trade relations for several countries revealed significant pressure of demand effects. Hence, the spillover of excess demand in domestic markets to foreign markets seemed a rather general phenomenon. This fact could be explained by a theory that states that actual demand for products from domestic ftrms will gene rally and systematically differ from the ex ante demand as suggested by equilibrium analysis. This latter demand concept comes close to Clower's 'notional demand' and Patinkin's 'potential demand'.

Since the 1950s, macroeconomics has been transformed. This book is about one of the most important aspects of that transformation: the attempt, through the end of the twenty-first century and beyond, to construct macroeconomic models rigorously derived from models of individual firms and households.

The centrally planned economies (CPEs) of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have experienced severe imbalances in domestic and external markets over the past several decades. As a result, they have been chronically afflicted by problems such as excess demand, repressed inflation, deficits of commodities, queues, waiting lists, and forced savings. Economists have responded to these phenomena by developing appropriate theoretical and empirical models of CPEs. Of particular note have been the pioneering studies of Richard Portes on disequilibrium econometric models and Janos Kornai on the shortage economy. Each approach has attracted followers who have produced numerous, innovative macro- and microeconomic models of Poland, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, and the USSR. These models have proved to be of considerable value in the analysis of the causes, consequences and remedies of disequilibrium phenomena. Inevitably, the new research has also generated controversies both between and within the schools of shortage and disequilibrium modelling, concerning the fundamental nature of the socialist economy, theoretical concepts and definitions, the specification of models, estimation techniques, interpretation of empirical findings, and policy recommend ations. Furthermore, the research effort has been energetic but incomplete, so many gaps exist in the field.

In this book on disequilibrium, growth and labor market dynamics we take predominantly a macroeconomic perspective. We present a working model that can easily be varied in different directions in order to subsume innovations in the literature on macroeconomics, old and new, and to contribute to important currently discussed macroeconomic issues. Our working model is set up in a way that there is a close relationship between our presented dynamic models and modern macro econometric models with disequilibrium both in the labor and the goods markets. One of our objectives is, therefore, to narrow the gap between theoretical and applied structural macrodynamic model building. We hope that the book will be a useful reference for all researchers, academic teachers and practitioners of macroeconomic and macro econometric model building who are interested in economic dynamics, independently of whether they use equilibrium or disequilibrium methods in their own research. We base this hope on the fact that our approach contains a number of unique features. The emphasis on the identification and analysis of the basic feedback mechanisms at work in modern macro economies. A detailed study of the partial as well as integrated dynamic interaction between these feedback mechanisms that consti tute the interdependence of markets and sectors of the modern macro economy. The rela tionship between the macroeconomic framework of our working model and the Walrasian, Non-Walrasian and New-Keynesian reformulations of macroeconomics.