Contracting over Prices

We define a solution concept, perfectly contracted equilibrium, for an intertempo- ral exchange economy where agents are simultaneously price takers in spot commodity markets while engaging in non-Walrasian contracting over future prices. In a setting with subjective uncertainty over future prices, we show that perfectly contracted equi- librium outcomes are a subset of Pareto optimal allocations. It is a robust possibility for perfectly contracted equilibrium outcomes to differ from Arrow-Debreu equilibrium outcomes. We show that both centralized banking and retrading with bilateral con- tracting can lead to perfectly contracted equilibria.