Paper 4, Section II, H

Optimization | Part IB, 2009

In a pure exchange economy, there are JJ agents, and dd goods. Agent jj initially holds an endowment xj∈Rdx_{j} \in \mathbb{R}^{d} of the dd different goods, j=1,…,Jj=1, \ldots, J. Agent jj has preferences given by a concave utility function Uj:Rd→RU_{j}: \mathbb{R}^{d} \rightarrow \mathbb{R} which is strictly increasing in each of its arguments, and is twice continuously differentiable. Thus agent jj prefers y∈Rdy \in \mathbb{R}^{d} to x∈Rdx \in \mathbb{R}^{d} if and only if Uj(y)⩾Uj(x)U_{j}(y) \geqslant U_{j}(x).

The agents meet and engage in mutually beneficial trades. Thus if agent ii holding ziz_{i} meets agent jj holding zjz_{j}, then the amounts zi′z_{i}^{\prime} held by agent ii and zj′z_{j}^{\prime} held by agent jj after trading must satisfy Ui(zi′)⩾Ui(zi),Uj(zj′)⩾Uj(zj)U_{i}\left(z_{i}^{\prime}\right) \geqslant U_{i}\left(z_{i}\right), U_{j}\left(z_{j}^{\prime}\right) \geqslant U_{j}\left(z_{j}\right), and zi′+zj′=zi+zjz_{i}^{\prime}+z_{j}^{\prime}=z_{i}+z_{j}. Meeting and trading continues until, finally, agent jj holds yj∈Rdy_{j} \in \mathbb{R}^{d}, where

∑jxj=∑jyj\sum_{j} x_{j}=\sum_{j} y_{j}

and there are no further mutually beneficial trades available to any pair of agents. Prove that there must exist a vector v∈Rdv \in \mathbb{R}^{d} and positive scalars λ1,…,λJ\lambda_{1}, \ldots, \lambda_{J} such that

∇Uj(yj)=λjv\nabla U_{j}\left(y_{j}\right)=\lambda_{j} v

for all jj. Show that for some positive a1,…,aJa_{1}, \ldots, a_{J} the final allocations yjy_{j} are what would be achieved by a social planner, whose objective is to obtain

max⁡∑jajUj(yj) subject to ∑jyj=∑jxj\max \sum_{j} a_{j} U_{j}\left(y_{j}\right) \quad \text { subject to } \sum_{j} y_{j}=\sum_{j} x_{j}

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