Existence of equilibria in the overlapping generations model: The nontransitive case (Q1341485)

The investigation object of the paper is a dynamic economic model of pure exchange \((X^i, P^i, \omega^i\), \(T^i: i\in N)\), where \(N\) is a countable infinite set of consumers and, for each consumer \(i\), \(X^i\) is his consumption set, \(P^i\) his preference over \(X^i\), \(\omega^i\) his endowment and \(T^i\) is the collection of his lifetime periods. For each period \(t\) the commodity-price duality is represented by a symmetric Riesz dual system \(\langle E_t, E_t'\rangle\), where \(E_t\) and \(E_t'\) are respectively the commodity space and price space. The spaces may be infinite-dimensional. The preferences \(P^i\) are not assumed to be transitive or complete. Each agent can consume only a finite set of periods and at each period only a finite set of agents are alive. The overlapping generations model is a particular case of this model. Main equilibrium existence results are obtained under the assumption that there exists a finite set of non- negligible endowment owners and under relaxation of the assumption to the infinite-lived assets owners. To get advanced results the authors construct a price space \(P\) and a commodity space \(\Lambda(P)\) of the entire economy which are subsets of the space products \(\prod^\infty_{t= 1} E_t'\) and \(\prod^\infty_{t= 1} E_t\), respectively. The spaces compose a commodity- price dual system \(\langle\Lambda(P), P\rangle\). Notions of equilibrium, quasi-equilibrium and weak quasi-equilibrium are introduced in relation with the duality. Several equilibrium existence theorems in corresponding terms are obtained under different sets of assumptions on the preferences and endowments of agents.