General Equilibrium And Game Theory

Andreu Mas-Colell revolutionized our understanding of competitive markets, price formation, and the behavior of market participants. This volume presents the papers that solidified his standing as one of the preeminent economic theorists of our time. It also is invaluable for anyone wishing to study the craft of a master of economic modeling.

The theory of competition has held a central place in economic analysis since Adam Smith. This book, written by one of the most distinguished of contemporary economic theorists, reports on a major research program to provide strategic foundations for the theory of perfect competition. Beginning with a concise survey of how the theory of competition has evolved, Gale makes extensive and rigorous use of dynamic matching and bargaining models to provide a more complete description of how a competitive equlibrium is achieved. Whereas economists have made use of a macroscopic description of markets in which certain behavioral characteristics, such as price-taking behavior, are taken for granted, Gale uses game theory to re-evaluate this assumption, beginning with individual agents and modelling their strategic interaction. A strategic foundation for competitive equilibrium shows how such interaction leads to competitive, price-taking behavior. Essential reading for graduate courses in game theory and general equilibrium.

JEAN-FRANQOIS MERTENS This book presents a systematic exposition of the use of game theoretic methods in general equilibrium analysis. Clearly the first such use was by Arrow and Debreu, with the "birth" of general equi librium theory itself, in using Nash's existence theorem (or a generalization) to prove the existence of a competitive equilibrium. But this use appeared possibly to be merely tech nical, borrowing some tools for proving a theorem. This book stresses the later contributions, were game theoretic concepts were used as such, to explain various aspects of the general equilibrium model. But clearly, each of those later approaches also provides per sea game theoretic proof of the existence of competitive equilibrium. Part A deals with the first such approach: the equality between the set of competitive equilibria of a perfectly competitive (i.e., every trader has negligible market power) economy and the core of the corresponding cooperative game.

The theory of competition has held a central place in economic analysis since the time of Adam Smith. This book, written by one of the most distinguished of contemporary economic theorists, reports on a major research program to provide strategic foundations for the theory of competition. Making use of insights from game theory, search theory and bargaining theory, the author develops a model to explain what actually goes on in markets and how a competitive general equilibrium is achieved. Essential reading for graduate courses in game theory and general equilibrium.

Decisions, Games and Markets is designed to stimulate new developments in decision theory, game theory and general equilibrium theory, as well as in their applications to economics. The book is divided into three parts - Decision Theory, Game Theory, and the Theory of Markets. Though its orientation is primarily methodological, some articles are more applied. The consistent use of formal analysis and methodological individualism constitutes the unifying theme of the book. Decisions, Games and Markets will be of considerable interest to both students and teachers of microeconomics and game and decision theory.

The aim of this book is to incorporate Marshallian ideas such as external increasing returns and monopolistic competitions into the general equilibrium framework of Walrasian tradition. New chapters and sections have been added to this revised and expanded edition of General Equilibrium Analysis of Production and Increasing Returns (World Scientific, 2009).The new material includes a presentation of equilibrium existence and core equivalence theorems for an infinite horizon economy with a measure space of consumers. These results are currently the focus of extensive studies by mathematical theorists, and are obtained by an application of an advanced mathematical concept called saturated (super-atomless) measure space.The second major change is the inclusion of a simple toy model of a liberal society which implements the difference principle proposed by J Rawls as a principle of distributive justice. This new section opens up a possibility to connect theoretical economics and political philosophy.Thirdly, the author presents the marginal cost pricing equilibrium and discusses welfare properties of the external increasing returns, which also belong to Marshall/ Pigou tradition of the Cambridge school.Finally, a new mathematical appendix treats basics of singular homology theory. Although the fixed point theorem is originally a theorem of algebraic topology, most economic students know its proof only in the context of the differentiable manifold theory presented by J Milnor. Considering the significance of the fixed point theorem and its playing a key role in general equilibrium theory, the purpose of this new appendix is to provide readers with the idea of a proof of Brower's fixed point theorem from the 'right place'.This volume will be helpful for graduate students and researchers of mathematical economics, game theory, and microeconomics.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to general equilibrium theory, covering the standard topics as well as the developments of the theory over the past fifty years. This ensures that the reader gains a thorough account of what has been established both in pure theory and in applications.In addition to the basic topics, this book elaborates on fields which are relevant but not mentioned frequently in this context. The material covered includes international trade, growth, finance and implementation, and it offers a broader view than what is usual in texts on general equilibrium theory. This book would make for suitable reading for undergraduate and graduate courses in macroeconomics.

In the area of dynamic economics, David Cass’s work has spawned a number of important lines of research, including the study of dynamic general equilibrium theory, the concept of sunspot equilibria, and general equilibrium theory when markets are incomplete. Based on these contributions, this volume contains new developments in the field, written by Cass's students and co-authors.