Unpublished Paper
Work of Invisible Hand: the gravitation between sellers and buyers on the consumption-leisure production possibility frontier.
Economics D11, D83
(2021)
Abstract
If the equilibrium price is equal to the lowest willingness to pay of consumers with zero search costs, it accumulates under price dispersion the willingness to sell of consumers with positive search costs. The satisficing searcher buys at a low price, which unintentionally equalizes marginal costs of his search with its marginal benefit and maximizes his consumption-leisure utility with regard to the equilibrium price. Labor and search costs are unit elastic with respect to the quantity demanded. Suboptimal choices reproduce initial corner solutions; satisficing purchases become optimal; consumers either buy optimally or quit the market.
The producer’s knowledge is limited by the quantity demanded, but he meets the consumer with a price, like he knows in advance his willingness to pay and the time spent on search. The consumption-leisure production possibility frontier optimally allocates his time between production and delivery; it determines not only the price for the quantity demanded, but also the meeting point, where the producer stops consumer’s search and sells him goods with leisure. Being unaware of how much the consumer has spent on labor and search, the producer unintentionally optimizes his consumption-leisure choice.
The transformation of producer’s time into consumer’s leisure time discovers the rate of their mutual interest or their gravitation, where its force is directly proportional to the product of quantity supplied and quantity demanded, and inversely proportional to the product of times the parties to the transaction have spent on it.
Keywords
- invisible hand,
- consumption-leisure choice,
- production possibility frontier,
- search,
- price dispersion,
- gravitation
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring March 16, 2021
Comments
The Russian version id published as 'Force of Invisible Hand, Labor, and Just Price: basic principles of sorting and matching under wage and price dispersion.’ Journal of Institutional Studies, 13 (1),37-59 (DOI: 10.17835/2076-6297.2021.13.1.037-059)
Citation Information
Sergey V. Malakhov. "Work of Invisible Hand: the gravitation between sellers and buyers on the consumption-leisure production possibility frontier." Economics D11, D83 (2021) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/sergey_malakhov/25/