A Geometric Generalization of the Planar Gale-Nikaidô Theorem

Abstract

The Gale-Nikaidô Theorem establishes global injectivity of maps defined over rectangular regions provided the Jacobian matrix is a P-matrix. We provide a purely geometric generalization of this result in the plane by showing that if the image of each edge of the rectangular domain is realized as a graph of a function over the appropriate axis, then the map is injective. We also show that the hypothesis that the Jacobian matrix is a P-matrix is simply one way to analytically check this geometric condition.