The role of money in supporting the Pareto optimality of competitive equilibrium in consumption-loan type models

Abstract

Perhaps the single most enduring theme in economics is that of the social desirability of the competitive mechanism. In its modern form, this theme occurs as the two basic theorems of welfare economics (see, in particular, Arrow). Our central concern in this paper is with the validity of the first of these two theorems—that every competitive equilibrium yields a Pareto optimal allocation—in idealized yet plausible models of intertemporal allocation in a market economy.

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