Core theory is a powerful tool to find competitive market-clearing prices. A familiar economic setting shows this, beginning with a single commodity produced using many factors of production and ending with the general case of many outputs and inputs. The analysis describes when the market has a...

Core theory furnishes a useful framework for studying a wide variety of economic problems. It has an undeserved reputation of being too abstract owing mainly to the manner in which it is employed in the theory of general equilibrium. In fact, core theory is a highly flexible way of looking at...