Approximate Versus Exact Equilibria

Felix Kubler and Karl Schmedders

No 1382, Discussion Papers from Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science

Abstract: This paper develops theoretical foundations for an error analysis of approximate equilibria in dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents and incomplete financial markets. While there are several algorithms which compute prices and allocations for which agents' first order conditions are approximately satisfied (approximate equilibria), there are few results on how to interpret the errors in these candidate solutions and how to relate the computed allocations and prices to exact equilibrium allocations and prices. We give a simple example which illustrates that approximate equilibria might be very far from exact equilibria. We then interpret approximate equilibria as equilibria for close-by economies, that is, for economies with close-by individual endowments and preferences. We provide sufficient conditions which ensure that approximate equilibria are close to exact equilibria of close-by economies. We give a detailed discussion of the error analysis for two models which are commonly used in applications, and OLG model with stochastic production and an asset pricing model with infinitively lived agents. We illustrate the analysis with some numerical examples. In these examples, the derived bounds are at most one order of magnitude larger than maximal errors in Euler equations.

Date: 2003-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/research/math/papers/1382.pdf main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Approximate Versus Exact Equilibria (2004)
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:nwu:cmsems:1382

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science, Northwestern University, 580 Jacobs Center, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-2014. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Fran Walker ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).