Pareto optimality and Walrasian equilibria

The paper concerns the study of a class of convex, constrained multiobjective optimization problems from the viewpoint of the existence issues. The main feature of the presented approach is that the classical qualification condition requiring the existence of interior points in the effective domains of functions under consideration does not hold. A variant of duality theory for multiobjective optimization problems based on the Fenchel theorem is formulated. Next, by using very recent results on the Walrasian general equilibrium model of economy obtained in Naniewicz [Z. Naniewicz, Pseudo-monotonicity and economic equilibrium problem in reflexive Banach space, Math. Oper. Res. 32 (2007) 436–466] the conditions ensuring the existence of Pareto optimal solutions for the class of multiobjective optimization problems are established. The concept of the proper efficiency is used as the solution notion. Finally, a new version of the second fundamental theorem of welfare economics is presented. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.