Group items tagged

This is an interesting article because it is a great example of justified price controls. A panel was chosen to go through and examine what exactly should be controlled, and it shows that price controls, if implemented correctly, can be extremely beneficial. 

Zimbabwe has set extremely low price controls for many primary products, and this has caused many people to go out of business. People are losing a lot of money, but the government is refusing to let the prices go higher. The government is making up for the loss by printing more money, which is causing price inflation. The people are upset, but with the government making sure that the prices are low by threatening to close businesses, there is nothing the people can do about it.

Zimbabwe government is controlling food price by physically forcing merchants and shop keepers to low their price down, other wise will be beaten. It is actually not going to work and can not last for long time. Producers can not supply the goods at a price that allows retailers to make a profit. The inflation of this country also reached the world's highest level. This article showed that price control has to be realistic otherwise will harm the economy.

This is a fairly recent article that talks about supply side policies implemented by the new head of the "Bank of England", Mark Carney. The article mainly discusses their new strides to reach unemployment rates, which heavily involves controlling inflation and interest rates. It is interesting how it talks about how Keynesian supply side policies were not effective post war era because they let inflation spiral out of control. The author believes in Mark Carney's aggressive take on the issue as it plans to control inflation, unemployment and has a contingency plan.

This article talks about how price controls influenced the market before the Christmas Eve in Ethiopia. They describe the chaos that was happening when the government reduced the price of food. Some people says they appreciate this changes , however others against the price controls in country, because they think that this is not beneficial at all.

Obama has mentioned that he will set a price control on the college education. With the increased price of universities and colleges, students are finding it increasingly more difficult to attend college. Therefore Obama has set out to confront this problem. He proposed to make permanent the American Opportunity tax credit. Colleges have to either lower their tuition rate or accept the fact that with higher tuition rates they will have lower funding from the governments.

Ministry of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism director Wan Uzir of Malaysia announced (on November 8) 14 items that are price controlled by the government but are recommended to be sold at a price even lower than the maximum set by the government. These price controls, on items such as chicken and potatoes, are in anticipation of the nearing Holiday, Deepavali (Diwali) on November 13, mainly to protect consumers from potentially unmanageable prices.

This article is interesting due to the fact that it demonstrates how companies may try to work around price controlling.

This article is related to the holy month of ramadan. In the holt month or Ramadan, a lot of households do indeed cook more than they need and distribute the excess food to poor people. therefore this increase in demand may cause companies to hike the prices of essential food items such as vegetables so the UAE government is looking to create a mechanism for controlling the prices of essential foods, by probably placing a maximum price

Indian government has announced that 60% of entire domestic pharma market will be under official price control. The policies of National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Policy will cover 348 products on the 2005 National List of Essential Medicines (NELM) plus others added to the newly-updated List (NELM-2011), which includes some 450 products.The long-awaited draft policy would also change the way prices of controlled products are regulated. Under the current Drug Price Control Order (DPCO), prices are based on market share, but the government's draft policy proposes changing to a system of setting a ceiling on the prices of formulations based on the Weighted Average Price of the leading three brands.

This article talks about the lack of government involvement in setting the limit of the price of houses. However, it seems that it is necessary to have control over the price of houses as the prices sky rocket.

This article is about how the chairman of an Indian Oil Company has no control over the price mechanisms of his product, and thus is in great debt. In response to this, he want the government to take over price controls for oil. Although government price control has not worked out particularly well in the past, in such a dire situation it is easy to see how this might be viewed as a good solution

This article was interesting because it showed the producers responding to the price control that the government had set up. In response to the ceiling price, many traders started an illegal market where they charged more for a good.

Government price controls for groceries backfired in Venezuela. Although their aim was to make basic necessities available for everyone, the maximum price was so low that it prevented producers from collecting any revenue. As a result, producers began supplying less, causing widespread food shortages.

This article is really interesting as it really gives you a sense on why a government would put in place a maximum price. The Indian government has decided to "put a cap " on the price of pharmaceutical drugs, such as AIDS drugs or similar things.

This article is about how New Jersey's state law that states that prohibits businesses from raising their prices more than 10 percent. This law is ruining business after the Hurricane Sandy. There should be a natural price increase due to the fact that there is less supplies, but this law prohibits that so supplies is being drained.

The article is about how the 'President Barack Obama's administration's health care act has come under fire for mandating that business owners pay for a portion of their employees' contraceptives'. But it also talks about religious principles and religious freedom from the actions taken by the government.

This article talked about the oligopolistic competition in smartphone market. Several firms such as Apple, Android, Microsoft and Nokia controls more than 80% of market share. It is a very typical oligopoly market structure. And we can see firms are colluding and competing. Microsoft and Nokia formed alliance to compete against Apple. Microsoft also kept releasing new product, such as the Windows Phone 7 last fall. Smartphone market is very centralized and competitive.

The article talked about the serious inflation in Iran. The government condemned international sanctions linked to the nuclear program. In March the inflation rate reached 31.5%, but the real rate might be double of that. This article shows inflation is indeed very hard to control.

This article talks about a oil company in Russia that controls on the gas exports and oil giants are trying to convince the government to liberalize exports. It also mentions how even if they were liberalized, it would take a while to change who exports gas because of loyalty from consumers.

This article talked about how an Iceland company Carbon Recycling International ehf, saw the rising demand and planned to increase output. It made the firm more efficient because recycling carbon reduced cost and saved resources. It also reflected the situation of perfect competition. Oil companies are price takers, they can't control the price of oil. And the product are homogeneous: oil form different company don't have significant quality difference.