This monograph is a systematic exposition of the authors' research on general equi librium models with an infinite number of commodities. It is intended to serve both as a graduate text on aspects of general equilibrium theory and as an introduction, for economists and mathematicians working in mathematical economics, to current research in a frontier area of general equilibrium theory. To this end, we have pro vided two introductory chapters on the basic economic model and the mathematical framework. The exercises at the end of each section complement the main exposition. Chapter one is a concise but substantiative discussion of the questions of exis tence and optimality of competitive equilibria in the Walrasian general equilibrium model of an economy with a finite number of households, firms and commodities. Our extension of this model to economies with an infinite number of commodities constitutes the core material of this book and begins in chapter three. Readers fa miliar with the Walrasian general equilibrium model as exposited in (13], [23] or [52] may treat chapter one as a handy reference for the main economic concepts and notions that are used throughout the book.

This book presents an original exposition of general equilibrium theory for advanced undergraduate and graduate-level students of economics. It contains detailed discussions of economic efficiency, competitive equilibrium, the first and second welfare theorems, the Kuhn-Tucker approach to general equilibrium, the Arrow-Debreu model, and rational expectations equilibrium and the permanent income hypothesis. Truman Bewley also treats optimal growth and overlapping generations models as special cases of the general equilibrium model. He uses the model and the first and second welfare theorems to explain the main ideas of insurance, capital theory, growth theory, and social security. It enables him to present a unified approach to portions of macro- as well as microeconomic theory. The book contains problems sets for most chapters.

The 800 pound gorilla in the room of macroeconomics is the question of why the overlapping generations model didn’t become the central workhorse model for macroeconomics, as opposed to the neoclassical growth model. The authors here explore the co-evolution of the two models.

In this book overlapping generations economies are analysed from a game theoretical point of view and the social acceptability of consumption allocations is studied in infinite horizon models of pure exchange economieswith agents with finite lifetimes who behave cooperatively. The core of such economies and its relation with competitive equilibria, both walrasian and monetary and the essential characteristics of the overlapping generations model are examined. The author defines the problem of trust in intertemporal consumption allocations as a question of belonging or not to the core of economy and provides a full characterization of the core allocations for n-goods pure exchange economies with one agent per generation: a consumption allocation belongs to the core if and only it is Pareto optimal and Sequentially Individually Rational. From this it follows that for one commodity economies no consumption allocation involving intertemporal transfers can belong to the core of the economy. In other words, no monetary equilibrium is socially viable. This result is no longer true for many goods models. For that case it is demonstrated that there exist bounds on the real value of equilibrium money purchases beyond which monetary equilibria are not socially viableand with many agents in every generation it is shown that as the economy becomes large and monetary (as well as IOU) equilibria become eventually excluded from the core of the economy. These results provide an analytical rationale for the fact that in most countries fiat money is legal tender.