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 title was first published in 2003. This text presents a new approach to incorporating regional details on production in a disequilibrium macroeconometric model. The early studies on disequilibrium dealt with either partial-adjustment models or models involving excess demand or supplies in markets. In this study the authors consider a different type of disequilibrium model - one in which econometric analysis makes use of the varying coefficients stochastic production frontier approach, which permits estimation and analysis of production efficiencies of individual producers. The book also presents an innovative approach to production modelling in macro econometric models as it provides a useful framework for incorporating production efficiencies and regional details of production in the macro models. It is a pioneering study that combines the stochastic frontier approach with macro econometric modelling. Primarily focused on India, it also provides insights into problems in modelling economies of other developing countries.

The book is an in-depth review of the theory and empirics of the demand for money and other financial assets. The different theoretical approaches to the portfolio choice problem are described, together with an up-to-date survey of the results obtained from empirical studies of asset choice behaviour. Both single-equation studies and the more complete multi-asset portfolio models, are analysed.

. 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.