In this paper, we prove an existence theorem for approximated equilibria in a class of discontinuous economies. The existence result is a direct consequence of a discontinuous extension of Brouwer’s fixed point Theorem (1912), and is a refinement of several classical results in the standard...

This paper studies recursive exchange economies with short sales. Agents maximize discounted expected utility. The asset structure is general and includes real securities, infinite-lived stocks, options, and other derivatives. The main result shows the existence of a competitive equilibrium...

I model an incomplete markets economy where unaware agents do not perceive all states of nature, so unintended default can occur when asset returns differ from what was perceived. The presence of default plays a crucial role in the proof of existence - particularly in economies where beliefs are...

We propose an extension of the incomplete markets general equilibrium model with production to situations in which firms default. In the model, firms are assumed to be owned by a single individual whose roles as entrepreneur and consumer are anonymous. Assets are exogenously collateralised and...

In this paper we use global analysis to study the welfare properties of general equilibrium economies with incomplete markets (GEI). Our main result is to show that constrained Pareto optimal equilibria are contained in a linear submanifold of the equilibrium set. This result is explicitly...

This paper presents a unified framework for examining the general equilibrium effects of transactions costs and trading constraints on security market trades and prices. The model uses a discrete time/state framework and Kuhn- Tucker theory to characterize the optimal decisions of consumers and...

We propose an extension of the incomplete markets general equilibrium model with production to situations in which firms default. In the model, firms are assumed to be owned by a single individual whose roles as entrepreneur and consumer are anonymous. Assets are exogenously collateralised and...

When individuals' labor and capital income are subject to uninsurable idiosyncratic risks, should capital and labor be taxed, and if so, how? In a two-period general equilibrium model with production, we derive a decomposition formula of the welfare effects of these taxes into insurance and...

This paper formally compares the fit of various versions of the incomplete markets model with aggregate uncertainty, relying on a simple Bayesian empirical framework. The models differ in the degree of households' heterogeneity, with a focus on the role of preferences. For every specification,...

This paper considers the macroeconomic implications of a set of empirical studies finding a high degree of dispersion in preference heterogeneity. It develops a model with both uninsurable idiosyncratic income risk and risk aversion heterogeneity to quantify their effects on wealth inequality....