Tâtonnement

The act of tâtonnement (trial-and-error) plays a key role in the formulation of general equilibrium theory. The claim is that if an initial contract does not lead to an equilibrium, it is ended and new contracts are formulated. If the initial contract is not called off, it will likely lead to a different set of prices, depending on the degree of error in the original process. The question is whether successive re-contracting continues with the parties forgetting the previously planned positions taken or whether the parties engage in a form of tâtonnement to achieve optimality. See also Hill climbing and Walrasian auction.

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Source: List of unsolved problems in economics (CC BY-SA 4.0)