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'.

In the first part of this book, we treat interacting and small open economies. We do this from an historical perspective, starting from the Classical model of the gold standard and the specie-flow mechanism and aim to show there that the Dornbusch IS-LM-PC approach, with or without rational expectations, can still be considered as a (if not the) core contribution to contemporaneous open economy macrodynamics, also on the level of structural macroeconometric model building. In the second part we then extend this analysis to the incorporation of more disequilibrium on the real markets, prominent further feedback channels of the macrodynamic literature and integrated macromodel building. We start from the closed economy, consider large open economies in a fixed exchange rate system, small open economies subject to high capital mobility, and finally two large interacting economies like the USA and Euroland. Our macrofounded approach extends and integrates non-market clearing traditions to macrodynamics and can be usefully compared with the New Keynesian approaches which are generally rigorously microfounded, but often much more limited in scope in capturing full market and agent interactions.

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.

This textbook offers a unique approach to macroeconomic theory built on microeconomic foundations of monetary macroeconomics within a unified framework of an intertemporal general equilibrium model extended to a sequential and dynamic analysis. It investigates the implications of expectations and of stationary fiscal policies on allocations, on the quantity of money, and on the dynamic evolution of the economy with and without noise. The text contrasts and compares the two main competing approaches in macroeconomics within the same intertemporal model of a closed monetary economy: the one postulating full price flexibility to guarantee equilibrium in all markets at all times under perfect foresight or rational expectations, versus the so called disequilibrium approach where trading occurs at non- market-clearing prices and wages when these adjust sluggishly from period to period in response to market disequilibrium signals.