Price Control

Why are Venezuela’s supermarkets so empty? By Matt O'Brien, Wonkblog (blog), The Washington Post, August 29, 2014. [Answer: Price Control.]

China Scraps Price Caps on Low-Cost Drugs By LAURIE BURKITT, The Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2014. [Price controls led to drug quality problems and shortages, as any economics undergrad could have predicted.]

All restaurants should copy the Goldman Sachs cafeteria’s genius pricing plan By Neil Irwin, Wonkblog (blog), The Washington Post, Published: October 18, 2013. [Restaurants should charge extra when the wait list is longer.]

U.S. Actsto Lift Sugar Prices By ALEXANDRA WEXLER, The Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2013. [Agency Sells the Sweetener at a Loss to Help Processors Avoid Defaults on Loans. Here's an example of how one government intervention can lead to another.]

Steven Brill’s 26,000-word health-care story, in one sentence by Sarah Kliff, Wonkblog (blog), The Washington Post, February 23, 2013. [Steven Brill's 26,000-word answer to the question “Why exactly are U.S. medical bills so high?” boils down to one sentence: The American health-care system does not use rate-setting. Virtually every other country sets prices for medical services.]

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us By Steven Brill, Time, Feb. 20, 2013. [“Why exactly are U.S. medical bills so high?” Watch this interview of Steve Brill by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show: Part I, Part 2, and Part 3.]

You Contain Health Care Spending With Price Controls By Matthew Yglesias, Moneybox (blog), Slate, Posted Monday, July 30, 2012. ["All around the world you see lots of different models of health care finance, but one thing that all the systems have in common is that the systems where spending is low have very stringent price controls."]

Romney praises health care in Israel, where research says ‘strong government influence’ has driven down costs by Sarah Kliff, Wonkblog, The Washington Post, July 30, 2012.

With Venezuelan Food Shortages, Some Blame Price Controls By William Neuman, The New York Times, Published: April 20, 2012. [Staples like milk, meat and toilet paper are hard to find in Venezuela, and many blame the government’s price-control policies.]

Chávez Threatens to Jail Price Control Violators By SIMON ROMERO, The New York Times, Published: February 17, 2007. [The scarcity of items like meat and chicken has led to a panicked reaction by Venezuela’s federal authorities.]

Tokyo Urges Set of Moves to Shore Up Stock Market By KEN BELSON, The New York Times, May 15, 2003.

The Zimbabwean model, The Economist, Nov 28th 2002. [The pros and cons of opting out of the global economy]

Hawaiian Officials Duel Adam Smith In Plan to Regulate Gasoline Prices, By JON HILSENRATH, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, May 6, 2002.

The Outlook: The Outlook, By Jon E. Hilsenrath, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, June 4, 2001.



Compiled and updated by Udayan Roy.