IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/doi10.1086-731413.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

(Near-)Substitute Preferences and Equilibria with Indivisibilities

Author

Listed:
  • Thành Nguyen
  • Rakesh Vohra

Abstract

An obstacle to using market mechanisms to allocate indivisible goods is the lack of competitive equilibria (CEs). Arrow and Hahn introduced social-approximate equilibria: price vectors with “small” excess demands. We define preferences called Δ-substitutes, where social-approximate equilibria exist with good-by-good excess demand bounded by 2(Δ−1), independent of economy size. For Δ=1, CEs exist even with income effects. A Δ greater than 1 allows for richer substitutability and complementarity patterns, broadening the scope for market mechanisms to allocate indivisible goods.

Suggested Citation

  • Thành Nguyen & Rakesh Vohra, 2024. "(Near-)Substitute Preferences and Equilibria with Indivisibilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 132(12), pages 4122-4154.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/731413
    DOI: 10.1086/731413
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/731413
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/731413
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/731413?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/731413. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.