General equilibrium is investigated with N commodities traded at N(N-1)/2 commodity-pairwise trading posts. Trade is a resource-using activity undertaken by firms recovering transaction costs through the spread between bid (wholesale) and ask (retail) prices (quoted as commodity rates of...

This paper posits an example of Walrasian general competitive equilibrium in an exchange economy with commodity-pairwise trading posts and transaction costs. Budget balance is enforced for each transaction at each trading post separately. Commodity-denominated bid and ask prices at each post...

Brilliant but little known, in part because his style was dense and crucial papers unpublished, Earl Thompson reformulated standard theory to achieve policy relevance, focusing on significant rent-seeking inefficiencies stemming from private information and transaction costs. Drawing on history,...