  A minimal model of a market of myopic non-cooperative agents who trade
bilaterally with random bids reproduces qualitative features of short-term
electric power markets, such as those in California and New England. Each agent
knows its own budget and preferences but not those of any other agent. The
near-equilibrium price established mid-way through the trading session diverges
to both much higher and much lower prices towards the end of the trading
session. This price divergence emerges in the model without any possibility
that the agents could have conspired to "game" the market. The results were
weakly sensitive to the endowments but strongly sensitive to the nature of the
agent's preferences and budget constraints.
