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Equilibria with indivisible goods and package-utilities

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  • Danilov, Vladimir I.
  • Koshevoy, Gleb A.
  • Lang, Christine

Abstract

We revisit the issue of existence of equilibrium in economies with indivisible goods and money, in which agents may trade many units of items. In [5] it was shown that the existence issue is related to discrete convexity. Classes of discrete convexity are characterized by the unimodularity of the allowable directions of one-dimensional demand sets. The class of graphical unimodular system can be put in relation with a nicely interpretable economic property of utility functions, the Gross Substitutability property. The question is still open as to what could be the possible, challenging economic interpretations and relevant examples of demand structures that correspond to other classes of discrete convexity. We consider here an economy populated with agents having a taste for complementarity; their utilities are generated by compounds of specific items grouped in 'packages'. Simple package-utilities translate in a straightforward fashion the fact that the items forming a package are complements. General package-utilities are obtained as the convolution (or aggregation) of simple packageutilities. We prove that if the collection of packages of items, that generates the utilities of agents in the economy, is unimodular then there exists a competitive equilibrium. Since any unimodular set of vectors can be implemented as a collection of 0-1 vectors ([3]), we get examples of demands for each class of discrete convexity.

Suggested Citation

  • Danilov, Vladimir I. & Koshevoy, Gleb A. & Lang, Christine, 2008. "Equilibria with indivisible goods and package-utilities," Papers 08-30, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    • Handle: RePEc:mnh:spaper:2319
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    File URL: https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/2319/1/dp08_30.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Gul, Faruk & Stacchetti, Ennio, 1999. "Walrasian Equilibrium with Gross Substitutes," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 95-124, July.
    2. Danilov, Vladimir & Koshevoy, Gleb & Murota, Kazuo, 2001. "Discrete convexity and equilibria in economies with indivisible goods and money," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 251-273, May.
    3. repec:awi:wpaper:0476 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Mamer, John W., 1997. "Competitive Equilibrium in an Exchange Economy with Indivisibilities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 385-413, June.
    5. Kelso, Alexander S, Jr & Crawford, Vincent P, 1982. "Job Matching, Coalition Formation, and Gross Substitutes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1483-1504, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Elizabeth Baldwin & Paul Klemperer, 2019. "Understanding Preferences: “Demand Types”, and the Existence of Equilibrium With Indivisibilities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(3), pages 867-932, May.

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