Equilibrium in the Jungle(PDF 22)简介开始
1 Introduction
In the typical analysis of an exchange economy, agents are involved in consumption
and exchange goods voluntarily when mutually beneficial. The
endowments and the preferences are the primitives of the model. The distribution
of consumption in socIEty is determined endogenously through trade.
This paper is motivated by a complementary perspective on human interaction.
Throughout the history of mankind, it has been quite common
(and we suspect that it will remain so in the future) that economic agents,
individually or collectively, use power to seize control of assets held by others.
Power relationships, either formal or informal, are pervasive in every
socIEty and take several forms. Often, power is purely physical. Sometimes,
however, power is more gentle. In the male-female “market”, for example,
charm and attraction play a key role in obtaining a favorite mate. In an office
parking lot, social conventions such as seniority allow control of the preferred
parking places. The power of persuasion enables some to convince others to
take actions against their own interest.
We introduce and analyze an elementary model of a socIEty, called the
jungle, in which economic transactions are governed by coercion. The jungle
consists of a set of individuals, each having exogenous preferences over bundles
of goods and exogenous “strength”. The ranking of agents according to
strength is unamBIguous and known to all. Power, in our model, has a simple
and strict meaning: a stronger agent is able to take resources from a weaker
agent.
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