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Optimality and Efficiency

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Abstract

An exchange economy consists of a group of people, each of whom has preferences concerning what commodities he or she likes, and initial holdings of the various commodities available. Operating under whatever institutional rules permit freedom of contract, the society redistributes the initial holdings among itself so as to achieve a distribution that is in some sense a solution to the exchange problem.

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Newman, P. (2018). Optimality and Efficiency. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1594

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