Edward Chamberlin, who initiated classroom market experiments, used the results of these experiments to argue that competitive equilibrium performs poorly in explaining the outcomes of real markets. Vernon Smith altered the design of Chamberlin's experiment to increase the amount of price...

Edward Chamberlin conjectured that the number of trades in realistic trading systems is likely to exceed that predicted by competitive equilibrium theory. He supported this conjecture by data from a large number of classroom experiments and with a plausible argument based on a numerical example....