Accessibility of Pareto optima

Abstract

Non-tâtonnement processes and planning procedures have been defined in different economic contexts, as dynamic processes to reach efficient allocations, with or without price adjustment, satisfying the property that, along the process, the utility of every agent is non-decreasing and transactions can occur, thus making a clear distinction with the study of tâtonnement processes whose goal is to reach competitive equilibria with transactions occurring only at equilibrium.

In this paper, we provide sufficient conditions guaranteeing that every Pareto optimum which is preferred or indifferent to some given initial situation by every agent is accessible by a monotone efficient dynamic process. The framework considered is general enough to encompass the accessibility of Pareto optima by a non-tâtonnement barter process in an exchange economy, the neutrality of the MDP procedure in an economy with public goods, and other types of planning procedures.