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.

This volume is the result of a conference held at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna. There is still a gap reflected both in fundamental meth odological differences and in the style of analysis between the Walrasian (and Edgeworthian) tradition of general equilibrium theory and the theo retical and policy problems raised in the framework of Keynesian and post-Keynesian macroeconomics. The conference succeeded in bringing together economic theorists working in fields ranging from abstract prob lems of mathematical equilibrium analysis to applied macroeconomic theory, and it is hoped that the present volume will contribute to bridging the above-mentioned hiatus. As organizer of the meeting and editor of its proceedings I want to thank the Institute for Advanced Studies for providing facilities and funds. I am also sincerely grateful to all my colleagues from the Institute for their generous help, in particular to Mrs Monika Herkner without whose assistance and organizational talent the conference would certainly not have been the success it in fact - in the opinion of all participants - turned out to have been. Furthermore, I wish to express my gratitude towards all participants in the meeting and contributors to the volume whose patient support of the whole enterprise proved indispensable. To Mrs Elfriede Auracher I am deeply indebted for her skillful and effective general management of the editorial work and her invaluable assistance in compiling the indexes.

Professor Richard Quandt has made a major contribution to the development of economics in the 20th century. The range and significance of his work has long required a collection of his essays which will allow his contribution to be assessed as a whole. Despite an early interest in microeconomic theory, Richard Quandt has devoted most of his career to econometrics and, in particular, modal split estimation. More recently his work has focused on the econometrics of disequilibrium models with reference to both free market and planned economies. As well as outlining his many articles in microtheory, general econometrics, disequilibrium modeling, financial economics and the economics of planned economies, this collection should have a particular value for all scholars interested in the emergence of the new economies in Eastern Europe, a subject to which Professor Quandt has applied himself in recent years. This book includes an introduction by Professor Quandt describing his early life in Budapest and the circumstances which led him to study economics in America.

Macroeconomics: An Introduction to the Non-Walrasian Approach provides the approach to macroeconomic theory based on the non-Walrasian method. This book presents the microeconomic concepts that can be applied in a simple and relevant manner to the fundamental topics of macroeconomic theory. Organized into five parts encompassing 14 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the fundamental concepts, describing the functioning of nonclearing markets, the role of expectations, the setting of prices by decentralized agents, and the derivation of optimal demand and supplies. This text then studies various non-Walrasian equilibrium concepts. Other chapters compare the classical and Keynesian theories of unemployment in the framework of a model. This book discusses as well the asymmetric price flexibility into the basic model. The final chapter deals with a dynamic model with explicit expectations, which allows a comparison of the employment effects of various expectations schemes and their realism. This book is a valuable resource for economists.

The purpose of this study is to investigate interrelations between planning mechanisms and disequilibria in a case where the planning decisions are centralized and are exogenously given to enterprises. The first introductory chapter is intended to provide an understanding of Poland's economic situation during the period under research. In the next five chapters the basic model, describing the households-planners relations in terms of consumption, labour, money and plans are derived, estimated, used for calculation of excess demands, for simulation of some monetary policies, and, finally, for providing optimal control experiments in which consumption excess demand is minimized on a reasonable level of the consumption volume. In the next two chapters the basic model is gradually extended, and the last chapter summarizes the results by formulating a more effective macroeconomic policy.

Robert Barro's Macroeconomics has become the classic textbook presentation of the equilibrium approach to macroeconomics. In its first four editions, this book has shown undergraduates how market-clearing models with strong microeconomic foundations can be used to understand real-world phenomena and to evaluate alternative macroeconomic policies. Moreover, a single, unified framework works as well for short-term business fluctuation as for long-term economic growth. This latest edition includes the most recent theoretical and empirical developments in economic growth, recent evidence on the macroeconomics of labor markets and public finance, and up-to-date results on the interplay between nominal and real variables.