A new approach to the existence of equilibria in vector lattices

Abstract Motivated by recent work of Huang and Kreps it is shown that the existence of a general equilibrium in an exchange economy whose commodity space is a vector lattice is guaranteed if (in addition to standard hypotheses) the price space is also a lattice. This is very weak in contrast with the usual requirement that the topology of the commodity space be locally solid (i.e., continuity of the lattice operations), a condition violated in models of Jones and of Huang and Kreps. The key to our proof is a disaggregated approach to the construction of supporting prices.