Wiktionary
n. Governmental restrictions on the prices that can be charged for goods and services in a market.
Wikipedia
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 or a minimum wage. 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 sometimes used by governments, economists usually agree that price controls don't accomplish what they are intended to do and are generally to be avoided. For example, nearly three-quarters of economists surveyed disagreed with the statement, "Wage-price controls are a useful policy option in the control of inflation."
Usage examples of "price controls".
As one aspect of their symbiotic affair, OPEC served the Mother Company by creating shortages when She wanted to build pipelines over fragile tundra, or block major governmental investment in research into solar and wind energy, or create natural gas shortfalls when pressing for removal of price controls.
With retail price controls in force and wholesale prices skyrocketing, White Castle had few other options.
Renewal of price controls, rationing, and the draft, vital things the President must have to fight the war.
Were they there to enforce price controls or, worse, to confiscate the fish the Takahashis had worked so hard to catch?
The motive is complex, resting in the aiji's ambitions to make the precedent of central control of dams, power grids, and rail apply to all natural resources, which will strip the provincial aijiin and the landholders of financial resources and centralize all international trade, with monopoly to the aiji in Shejidan, and consequently price controls which will considerably enrich the central government at the expense of local governments and rightful landholders.
And everything they say makes sense on at least one level: Fears of arbitrary government price controls, expropriation, mounting labor difficulties, and the risks of long-term investments vs.
Apparently he was afraid that if you succeeded in taking over the dimensions, you would implement price controls, thereby putting him out of business as a merchant.