Temporary equilibrium with storable commodities (Q1090216)

This paper fills a gap in temporary equilibrium theory by establishing necessay conditions and sufficient conditions for the existence of temporary equilibrium in a sequential economy with spot and incomplete futures markets for storable commodities and with heterogeneous expectations. An important realistic feature of the model is an uncertain storage technology. Overlapping expectations and the usual sufficient conditions guarantee the existence of equilibrium. Inventory speculation implies a lower bound on current sport prices in terms of futures prices and the storage technology. These results extend to an economy in which observed aggregate inventories influence expectations in a well-behaved manner.