Price controls are governmental restrictions on the prices that can be charged for goods and services in a market. The intent behind implementing such controls can stem from the desire to maintain affordability of staple foods and goods, to prevent price gouging during shortages, and to slow inflation, or, alternatively, to insure a minimum income for providers of certain goods. There are two primary forms of price control, a price ceiling, the maximum price that can be charged, and a price floor, the minimum price that can be charged.
Historically, price controls have often been imposed as part of a larger incomes policy package also employing wage controls and other regulatory elements.
Although price controls are often used by governments, economists usually agree that price controls don't accomplish what they are intended to do and are generally to be avoided.
Read more about Price Controls: Historical Examples, Criticisms
Famous quotes containing the words price and/or controls:
“I have asked a lot of my emotions—one hundred and twenty stories. The price was high, right up with Kipling, because there was one little drop of something, not blood, not a tear, not my seed, but me more intimately than these, in every story, it was the extra I had. Now it has gone and I am just like you now.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)