It's called an allocation strategy[0], and what you describe is the "market" one. There's also queues / lines and lotteries, for example. In a line system, ther

It's called an allocation strategy[0], and what you describe is the "market" one. There's also queues / lines and lotteries, for example. In a line system, there's a first come first served principle, and a lottery consists of people signalling their intent to buy, and then the buyers are selected randomly from that pool. [0] http://www.econoclass.com/allocation.html http://www.econoclass.com/allocation.html