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The Emergence of a Price System from Decentralized Bilateral Exchange

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  • Gintis Herbert

    (Santa Fe Institute)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the dynamics of completely decentralized bilateral exchange. In such a framework, neither money nor prices as public information exist. Rather, prices represent an agent's barter strategy, and hence are private information. We call these private prices. Agents formulate trade offers and accept or reject offers from other traders, on the basis of their private prices. Private prices are updated by low-scoring agents periodically imitating the strategies of higher-scoring agents. We show that a system of quasi-public prices emerges in the medium run, and these quasi-public prices converge to stationary distributions that are approximately competitive equilibria of the underlying Walrasian model in the long run. We thus provide, for the first time, a general, decentralized disequilibrium adjustment mechanism that renders market equilibrium dynamically stable in a highly simplified production and exchange economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Gintis Herbert, 2006. "The Emergence of a Price System from Decentralized Bilateral Exchange," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-15, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejtec:v:contributions.6:y:2006:i:1:n:13
    DOI: 10.2202/1534-5971.1302
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Antoine Mandel & Nicola Botta, 2009. "A note on the stochastic stability of equilibrium in some exchange economies," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 09084, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    2. Sarah Wolf & Steffen Fürst & Antoine Mandel & Wiebke Lass & Daniel Lincke & Federico Pablo-Marti & Carlo Jaeger, 2013. "A multi-agent model of several economic regions," PSE - Labex "OSE-Ouvrir la Science Economique" halshs-00825217, HAL.
    3. Ghosal, Sayantan & Porter, James, 2010. "Out-Of-Equilibrium Dynamics With Decentralized Exchange: Cautious Trading And Convergence To Efficiency," Economic Research Papers 271179, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    4. Gerard Ballot & Antoine Mandel & Annick Vignes, 2015. "Agent-based modeling and economic theory: where do we stand?," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 10(2), pages 199-220, October.
    5. Hossein Sabzian & Alireza Aliahmadi & Adel Azar & Madjid Mirzaee, 2018. "Economic inequality and Islamic Charity: An exploratory agent-based modeling approach," Papers 1804.09284, arXiv.org.
    6. Chen, Shu-Heng, 2012. "Varieties of agents in agent-based computational economics: A historical and an interdisciplinary perspective," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 1-25.
    7. Simon Carrignon & Tom Brughmans & Iza Romanowska, 2020. "Tableware trade in the Roman East: Exploring cultural and economic transmission with agent-based modelling and approximate Bayesian computation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-23, November.
    8. Antoine Mandel & Carlo Jaeger & Steffen Fürst & Wiebke Lass & Daniel Lincke & Frank Meissner & Federico Pablo-Marti & Sarah Wolf, 2010. "Agent-based dynamics in disaggregated growth models," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00542442, HAL.
    9. Mandel Antoine & Botta Nicola, 2009. "A Note on Herbert Gintis' "Emergence of a Price System from Decentralized Bilateral Exchange"," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-18, December.
    10. Athreya, Kartik B., 2014. "Big Ideas in Macroeconomics: A Nontechnical View," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262019736, December.
    11. Maria-Augusta Miceli & Federico Cecconi & Giovanni Cerulli, 2013. "Walrasian Tatonnement by Sequential Pairwise Trading: Convergence and Welfare Implications," Working Papers in Public Economics 161, University of Rome La Sapienza, Department of Economics and Law.
    12. Kemp-Benedict Eric, 2017. "Dynamic Stability of Post-Keynesian Pricing," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 17(2), pages 1-12, June.
    13. Flåm, Sjur Didrik & Gramstad, Kjetil, 2012. "Direct Exchange in Linear Economies," Working Papers in Economics 05/12, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.
    14. Ghosal, Sayantan & Porter, James, 2013. "Decentralised exchange, out-of-equilibrium dynamics and convergence to efficiency," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 1-21.
    15. Pascal Seppecher, 2012. "Jamel, a Java Agent-based MacroEconomic Laboratory," Working Papers halshs-00697225, HAL.
    16. Flåm, S.D. & Godal, O., 2008. "Market clearing and price formation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 956-977, March.
    17. Shu-Heng Chen & Bin-Tzong Chie & Ying-Fang Kao & Ragupathy Venkatachalam, 2019. "Agent-Based Modeling of a Non-tâtonnement Process for the Scarf Economy: The Role of Learning," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 54(1), pages 305-341, June.
    18. Sjur Didrik Flåm, 2013. "Reaching Market Equilibrium Merely by Bilateral Barters," CESifo Working Paper Series 4504, CESifo.
    19. Tongkui Yu & Shu-Heng Chen, 2021. "Realizable Utility Maximization as a Mechanism for the Stability of Competitive General Equilibrium in a Scarf Economy," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 58(1), pages 133-167, June.

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