General Equilibrium Jonathan Levin∗ November 2006 “From the time of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in 1776, one re- current theme of economic analysis has been the remarkable degree of coherence among the vast numbers of individual and seemingly sepa- rate decisions about the buying and selling of commodities. In every- day, normal experience, there is something of a balance between the amounts of goods and services that some individuals want to supply and the amounts that other, differerent individuals want to sell [sic]. Would-be buyers ordinarily count correctly on being able to carry out their intentions, and would-be sellers do not ordinarily find themselves producing great amounts of goods that they cannot sell. This expe- rience of balance is indeed so widespread that it raises no intellectual disquiet among laymen; they take it so much for granted that they are not disposed to understand the mechanism by which it occurs.” Kenneth Arrow (1973) 1 Introduction General equilibrium analysis addresses precisely how these “vast numbers of indi- vidual and seemingly separate decisions” referred to by Arrow aggregate in a way that coordinates productive effort, balances supply and demand, and leads to an efficient allocation of goods and services in the economy. The answer economists have provided, beginning with Adam Smith and continuing through to Jevons and ∗Various sections of these notes draw heavily on lecture notes written by Felix Kubler; some of the other sections draw on Mas-Colell, Whinston and Green. 1 Walras is that it is the price system plays the crucial coordinating and equilibrating role: the fact the everyone in the economy faces the same prices is what generates the common information needed to coordinate disparate individual decisions. You doubtless are familiar with the standard treatment of equilibrium in a single market. Price plays the role of equilibrating demand and supply so that all buyers who want to buy at the going price can, and do, and similarly all sellers who want to sell at the going price also can and do, with no excess or shortages on either side. The extension from this partial equilibrium in a single market to general equilibrium reflectstheideathatitmaynotbelegitimatetospeakof equilibrium with respect to a single commodity when supply and demand in that market depend on the prices of other goods. On this view, a coherent theory of the price system and the coordination of economic activity has to consider the simultaneous general equilibrium of all markets in the economy. This of course raises the questions of (i) whether such a general equilibrium exists; and (ii) what are its properties. A recurring theme in general equilibrium analysis, and economic theory more generally, has been the idea that the competitive price mechanism leads to out- comes that are efficient in a way that outcomes under other systems such as planned economies are not. The relevant notion of efficiency was formalized and tied to competitive equilibrium by Vilfredo Pareto (1909) and Abram Bergson (1938). This line of inquiry culminates in the Welfare Theorems of Arrow (1951) and De- breu (1951). These theorems state that there is in essence an equivalence between Pareto efficient outcomes and competitive price equilibria. Our goal in the next few lectures is to do some small justice to the main ideas of general equilibrium. We’ll start with the basic concepts and definitions, the welfare theorems, and the efficiency properties of equilibrium. We’ll then provide a proof that a general equilibrium exists under certain conditions. From there, we’ll investigate a few important ideas about general equilibrium: whether equilibrium is unique, how prices might adjust to their equilibrium levels and whether these levels are stable, and the extent to which equilibria can be characterized and changes in exogenous preferences or endowments will have predictable consequences. Finally we’ll discuss how one can incorporate production into the model and then time 2 and uncertainty, leading to a brief discussion of financial markets. 2TheWalrasianModel We’re going to focus initially on a pure exchange economy. An exchange economy is an economy without production. There are a finite number of agents and a finite number of commodities. Each agent is endowed with a bundle of commodities. Shortly the world will end and everyone will consume their commodities, but before thishappenstherewillbeanopportunityfortradeatsomesetprices.Wewant to know whether there exist prices such that when everyone tries to trade their desired amounts at these prices, demand will just equal supply, and also what the resulting outcome will look like – whether it will be efficient in a well-defined sense and how it will depend on preferences and endowments. 2.1 The Model Consider an economy with I agents i = 1, ..., I and L commodities l ∈ I { } L ∈ = 1, ..., L . A bundle of commodities is a vector x R+.Eachagenti has an L { }i L i L ∈ endowment e R+ and a utility function u : R+ R. These endowments and ∈ → i i utilities are the primitives of the exchange economy, so we write =((u ,e)i ). E ∈I Agents are assumed to take as given the market prices for the goods. We won’t have much to say about where these prices come from, although we’ll say a bit L later on. The vector of market prices is p R+; all prices are nonnegative. ∈ Each agent chooses consumption to maximize her utility given her budget con- straint. Therefore, agent i solves: max ui(x) s.t. p x p ei. x RL · ≤ · ∈ + The budget constraint is slightly different than in standard price theory. Recall that the familiar budget constraint is p x w,wherew is the consumer’s initial · ≤ wealth. Here the consumer’s “wealth” is p ei, the amount she could get if she sold · 3 her entire endowment. We can write the budget set as i(p)= x : p x p ei . B { · ≤ · } We’ll occasionally use this notation below. 2.2 Walrasian Equilibrium We now define a Walrasian equilibrium for the exchange economy. A Walrasian equilibrium is a vector of prices, and a consumption bundle for each agent, such that (i) every agent’s consumption maximizes her utility given prices, and (ii) markets clear: the total demand for each commodity just equals the aggregate endowment. i Definition 1 A Walrasian equilibrium for the economy is a vector (p, (x )i ) E ∈I such that: 1. Agents are maximizing their utilities: for all i , ∈ I xi arg max ui(x) ∈ x i(p) ∈B 2. Markets clear: for all l , ∈ L i i xl = el. i i X∈I X∈I 2.3 Pareto Optimality The second important idea is the notion of Pareto optimality, due to the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. This notion doesn’t have anything to do with equi- librium per se (although we’ll see the close connection soon). Rather it considers the set of feasible allocations and identifies those allocations at which no consumer couldbemadebetteroff without another being made worse off. i I L i Definition 2 An allocation (x )i R+· is feasible if for all l : i xl ∈I i ∈ ∈ L ∈I ≤ i el. ∈I P P 4 Definition 3 Givenaneconomy , afeasibleallocationx is Pareto optimal (or E Pareto efficient) if there is no other feasible allocation xˆ such that ui(ˆxi) ui(xi) ≥ for all i with strict inequality for some i . ∈ I ∈ I You should note that Pareto efficiency, while it has significant content, says essentially nothing about distributional justice or equity. For instance, it can be Pareto efficientforoneguytohaveeverythingandeveryoneelsehavenothing. Pareto efficiency just says that there aren’t any “win-win” changes around; it’s quiet on how social trade-offs should be resolved. 2.4 Assumptions As we go along, we’re going to repeatedly invoke a bunch of assumptions about consumers’ preferences and endowments. We summarize the main ones here. (A1) For all agents i , ui is continuous. ∈ I i i i (A2) For all agents i , u is increasing, i.e. u (x0) >u(x) whenever x0 x. ∈ I À (A3) For all agents i , ui is concave. ∈ I (A4) For all agents i , ei 0. ∈ I À The first three assumptions – continuity, monotonicity and concavity of the utility function – should be familiar from consumer theory. Some of these are a bit stronger than necessary (e.g. monotonicity can be weakened to local nonsatiation, concavity to quasi-concavity), but we’re not aiming for maximum generality. The last assumption, about endowments, is new and is a big one. It says that everyone has a little bit of everything. This turns out to be important and you’ll see where it comes into play later on. 3 A Graphical Example General equilibrium theory can quickly get into the higher realms of mathemat- ical economics. Nevertheless a lot of the big ideas can be expressed in a simple 5 two-person two-good exchange economy. A useful graphical way to study such economies is the Edgeworth box, after F. Edgeworth, a famous Cambridge (U.K.) economist of the 19th century.1 Figure 1(a) presents an Edgeworth box. The bottom left corner is the origin for agent 1. The bottom line is the x-axis for Agent 1 and the left side is the y-axis. 1 1 1 In the picture, agent 1’s endowment is e =(e1,e2). For agent 2, the origin is the top right corner and everything is flipped upside down and backward. Every point in the box represents a (non-wasteful) allocation of the two goods. 2 2 x1 e1 Agent 2 Agent 2 1 0 x2 B2(p) 1 2 e2 e2 e e x1(p,p•e1) B1(p) x 2 0 2 1 1 1 Agent 1 e1 x1 Agent 1 e1 Figures 1(a) and 1(b): The Edgeworth Box Figure 1(b) adds prices into the picture.