On voluntary and efficient allocations

Abstract

A set of sufficiency conditions is presented for Walrasian equilibrium to be equivalent to voluntary and efficient allocations. An important corollary of this equivalence is that voluntary trade in non-clearing markets, which is omnipresent in all market economies, is inefficient. Moreover, our assumptions generalize all the results on the Pareto-efficiency properties of disequilibrium. This generalization also shows that the inefficiency of disequilibrium is germane to the existence of Walrasian equilibrium.