Multiple Equilibria in Exchange Economies with Homothetic, Nearly Identical Preferences

For agents with identical homothetic preferences (but possibly different endowments), aggregate excess demand can be derived from maximization of a utility function of a representative agent whose endowment is the sum of the individual's endowments. Such an economy has a unique equilibrium. In this paper, a metric p is defined on the set P of preference relations representable by CES utility functions. It is then shown that there are agentswhose preference relations in P are arbitrarily close to one another in t he metric p, and there are endowments for these agents, such that the resulting exchange economy has a multiple Walrasian equilibria.