Hierarchical Trade

Hans Gersbach and Hans Haller

No 7764, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We study the allocation of commodities through a two-stage hierarchy of competitive markets. Groups or countries trade at global prices while individuals within a group trade at local prices. We identify the free trade and the autarky equilibrium as polar cases. We show that no other two-stage market equilibria exist if the commodity space is two-dimensional. An example demonstrates that other, so-called intermediate equilibria exist for three dimensional commodity spaces. We give two existence proofs for intermediate equilibria in higher dimensions. Each proof provides an explicit construction of special classes of intermediate equilibria. Finally, we consider the consequences for welfare and trade flows when some countries control the agency that organizes trade at the global level.

Keywords: Control of trading platforms; Hierarchical trade; Intermediate equilibria (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D43 D50 F10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP7764 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: HIERARCHICAL TRADE (2018)
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:cpr:ceprdp:7764

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP7764

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().