Equilibrium in quality markets, beyond the transferable case

Abstract

We consider the market for an indivisible quality good, in the tradition of standard hedonic equilibrium theory but replacing the commonly used quasi-linear assumption on consumers’ preferences by a more realistic nonlinear budget constraint. Taking advantage of quasi-linearity on the producer’s side, we prove that an optimal transport-like argument can still be used to derive existence of equilibria. We also discuss some simple one-dimensional examples.