The Le Chatelier Principle in lattices

Julian Jamison ()
Additional contact information
Julian Jamison: UC Berkeley

Economics Bulletin, 2006, vol. 3, issue 2, 1-9

Abstract: The standard Le Chatelier Principle states that the long-run demand for a good (in which by definition there are fewer restraints on the variables) is more elastic than short-run demand. The fundamental insight above goes well beyond demand theory, and proofs of this basic idea have been found in various settings. Nearly all of these have been continuous optimization problems requiring assumptions on the continuity of the objective function and on the convexity of the choice set. However, the statement and intuition for the original principle do not seem to rely on any such `technical' assumptions. Work by Milgrom & Shannon on monotone [ordinal] comparative statics provides an obvious framework to pursue a broader result in a discrete environment. The present paper therefore formulates and proves a very general Le Chatelier Principle in the context of lattices. A further generalization is that we allow the choice set to vary (potentially as a function of the underlying parameter).

Keywords: comparative; statics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C6 L2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-01-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/EB/2006/Volume3/EB-05C60003A.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-05c60003

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics Bulletin from AccessEcon
Bibliographic data for series maintained by John P. Conley ().