Semistrictly quasiconcave approximation and an application to general equilibrium theory (Q2347146)

In order to generalize existence results of equilibria for competitive economies, first, the authors prove approximations of quasiconcave functions (being utility functions of the agents) by semistrictly quasiconcave functions. To this purpose they take set convergences in Kuratowski sense and, to handle level sets of approximating functions, they use for closed convex subsets \(P\) and \(Q\) of a Banach space the function \[ \mu_{P,Q} (x) =\text{inf} \{\lambda \geq 0 : x \in \lambda Q + (1- \lambda) P \} . \] Second, they apply the proven results to sharpen existence theorems of equilibria for free-disposal economies and for the case of an economy without free-disposal and get weaker requirements (esp. with respect to satiation properties) of the utility functions for the agents.