On this market over 700 buyers meet over 40 sellers, to trade different types of fish. The market is organised as in our model, that is, no prices are posted, sellers start with a stock of fish which has to be disposed of rapidly because of its perishable nature.
Buyers are either retailers or restaurant owners.
Deals are made on a bilateral basis and the market closes at a fixed time. Of course the model is a caricature of the real situation since the alternative for a buyer to purchasing his optimal good is, in fact, to purchase , in his view, some inferior alternative. The direct examination of the 16 Mb transactions file with the help of standard sorting facilities reveals a lot of organisation in terms of prices and buyers preferences for sellers. In particular, one immediately observes that most frequent buyers, those who visit the market more than once per week, with very few exceptions visit only one seller, while less frequent buyers would visit several sellers, which is consistent with our model. The transactions data will be sumarized in this section in terms that only address the organisation issue.