NATURALLY OCCURRING PREFERENCES AND GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM: A LABORATORY STUDY
成果类型：
Article
署名作者：
Crockett, Sean; Friedman, Daniel; Oprea, Ryan
署名单位：
Chapman University System; Chapman University; University of California System; University of California Santa Cruz; University of Essex; University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara
刊物名称：
INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW
ISSN/ISSBN：
0020-6598
DOI：
10.1111/iere.12500
发表日期：
2021
页码：
831-859
关键词：
摘要：
We examine whether economies constructed using experimentally measured preferences (for risk) tend to suffer from aggregation pathologies (like nonexistence and multiplicity of equilibrium) cautioned by the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu theorem. We show that aggregation pathologies should be expected to arise frequently in homogeneous exchange economies, but dwindle and eventually disappear as economies grow diverse. When subjects actually trade, general equilibrium predictions are accurate in most cases, and the failures occur only in economies a priori classified as fragile to preference instability. Our study uses individual-level experimental data to address longstanding questions in general equilibrium theory that are unanswerable using prior methods.