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.

. The organizers of the ninth symposium, which produced the current proceedings volume, were Claude Hillinger at the University of Munich, Giancarlo Gandolfo at the University of Rome "La Sapienza," A. R. Bergstrom at the University of Essex, and P. C. B. Phillips at Yale University.

This monograph grew out of a project which was sponsored by the Swiss National Foundation ("Schweizerischer Nationalfonds") under grant no. 4. 636-0. 83. 09. Yithin this project, prediction-oriented estimation methods for the canonical econometric disequilibrium model were developed. The present monograph deals with the application of these estimation techniques to three aggregative markets of the Swiss economy. Parts of the monograph have been presented at various places: the estimation techniques described in chapter 3 at the European Meeting of the Econometric Society, Madrid 1984; the application to residential investment described in chapter 4 at a symposium on housing policy at the University of Mannheim, 1984; the empirical study on the money stock described in chapter 5 at the Symposium on Money, Banking and Insurance held at the University of Karlsruhe, 1984, as well as at a joint seminar of the University of Basle and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 1985; and, finally, the empirical study on the aggregate labor market described in chapter 6 at a seminar of the University of ZUrich, 1985. Comments from toe seminar participants, in particular from Palle S. Andersen (BIS) who served as a discussant, Pascal Bridel (Swiss National Bank, SNB), Franz Ettlin (SNB), and Kurt Schiltknecht (Nordfinanz-Bank, Zurich) are gratefully acknowledged, without implying any responsibility on their part. The methodological part described in chapters 2 and 3 is contributed by G. Frei and B.