El rol de la escasez en la determinación del valor de cambio: Una aproximación empírica basada en juegos de mercado

Abstract

This research report empirically analyzes Walrasian scarcity theory of value using an experimental design based on market games. The study begins with a competitive general equilibrium model for two goods and two individuals, employing Cobb-Douglas utility functions. It develops the model algebraically and presents three numerical examples illustrating different equilibrium configurations. Furthermore, it establishes a methodological framework grounded in a theoretical approach, allowing the model's predictions to be subjected to empirical testing and its explanatory power to be evaluated. Based on this framework, an experiment is designed in which students act as economic agents and directly express their preferences between two goods (bonds). These preferences are normalized using percentages, which serve as weighting parameters for the preferences within the Cobb-Douglas function, reflecting the importance each participant assigns to each good. With these parameterized preferences and the endowments (bonds) that individuals have, the central objective is to evaluate whether the relative prices that emerge in the laboratory correspond to the relative scarcity predicted by Walras.