Talk:Walrasian auction

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[edit] Merge French to this auction

That sounds fine by me. But I don't want to do it the other way around; let's keep titles as descriptive as possible. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 04:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think merging is appropriate. The Walrasian auction is a conceptual device for talking about markets. The French auction (at least as the article describes) is a real-world auction mechanism. For instance, in a real auction, I'm pretty sure that the buyers don't give the auctioneer their fully-specified demand curves. So I think they shouldn't be merged; if they are the merge should be done very carefully to identify what's theory vs. reality and what the relationship is between the two. Cretog8 (talk) 08:07, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the merge should be done very carefully so as not to spoil the contents of either article. The main Auction article obviously favours "French auction" as being the most widely accepted title for the merged article. At least for English-speaking readers "French auction" is easier to remember than either "Tâtonnement" or "Walrasian auction". But readers looking for those titles should of course be rerouted to "French auction". Also please note that several types of auctions are named after the country were the auction was first used or after the nationality of the inventor. I also strongly feel that there is a lot more to say about French auction. The article is not yet complete. Theory and practical auction design are always closely connected. Max7437 (talk) 12:27, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I put the merge tags on because in my experience in mechanism design as studied in computer science, the term "Walrasian auction" can be used to not necessarily require full demand curves from all agents. From your comments, it sounds like "French auction" is a term used more in practice, so the Walrasian auction would be a generalization. Mike Wellman is well known in auctions and mechanism design as it pertains to AI in computer science, and has a few well-cited papers on using Walrasian auctions (search for Walras): [1]. Halcyonhazard (talk) 02:44, 10 June 2008 (UTC)