Supermodularity and Complementarity

The economics literature is replete with examples of monotone comparative statics; that is, scenarios where optimal decisions or equilibria in a parameterized collection of models vary monotonically with the parameter. Most of these examples are manifestations of complementarity, with a common explicit or implicit theoretical basis in properties of a super-modular function on a lattice. Supermodular functions yield a characterization for complementarity and extend the notion of complementar...