Pricing in Economies with a Variable Number of Commodities

Robert P. Gilles and Dimitrios Diamantaras
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Robert P. Gilles: Virginia Polytechnic & State University

Microeconomics from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We present a general equilibrium model that encompasses the endogenous selection of a set of tradeable commodities. At its foundation we introduce the notion of a trade infrastructure as a set of social institutions describing the trade and production technologies available to the agents in the economy. Our model bridges the analyses of economies with a finite number of commodities and those with an infinite number, and it provides a general framework for investigating a very large class of possible applications. We discuss in detail a simple example on the development of a guild economy into a market based economy. We introduce an equilibrium concept that describes the pricing of trade infrastructures, based on the notion of valuation equilibrium for economies with abstract public goods, as in Diamantaras and Gilles (1996, International Economic Review, 37, 851-860). Through this concept we are able to price the tradeability of a commodity by itself. As our main results we obtain the existence as well as the decentralization of Pareto efficient allocations using the concept of valuation equilibrium. JEL classification: D23, D41, D46, D59, D90, H40, O12

Keywords: Trading; systems; infrastructures; welfare; theorems; general; equilibrium; Public; economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 D41 D46 D59 D90 H40 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 1997-10-15
Note: Type of Document - Adobe Acrobat 3.0 document; prepared on IBM PC/Win 3.11; to print on Any printer Adobe Reader can use; pages: 35 ; figures: None
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