Résumé en anglais

For utility maximization problems under proportional transaction costs, it has been observed that the original market with transaction costs can sometimes be replaced by a frictionless {\em shadow market} that yields the same optimal strategy and utility. However, the question of whether or not this indeed holds in generality has remained elusive so far. In this paper we present a counterexample which shows that shadow prices may fail to exist. On the other hand, we prove that short selling constraints are a sufficient condition to warrant their existence, even in very general multi-currency market models with possibly discontinuous bid-ask-spreads.