Market and Shadow Prices in a Pure Consumption Economy With Institutional Price Constraints

Abstract

When an economy has institutional price constraints the relationship between market prices and shadow prices is not yet fully investigated. A pure consumption economy is considered where market prices guide the consumption behavior and shadow prices measure the social value of resources. In this case we show that if the utility function is additively separable there exists a complementarity relation between the difference of the market price and the shadow price and the difference of the market price and the regulated upper (or lower) bound.