Equilibrium with Arbitrary Market Structure

Fifty years ago Arrow [

1

] introduced contingent commodities and Debreu [

4

] observed that this reinterpretation of a commodity was enough to apply the existing general equilibrium theory to uncertainty and time. This interpretation of general equilibrium theory is the Arrow-Debreu model. The complete market predicted by this theory is clearly unrealistic, and Radner [

10

] formulated and proved existence of equilibrium in a multiperiod model with incomplete markets.

In this paper the Radner result is extended. Radner assumed a specific structure of markets, independence of preferences, indifference of preferences, and total and transitive preferences. All of these assumptions are dropped here. We — like Radner — keep assumptions implying compactness.