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Punto Fijo, November 22nd, 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) - The Venezuelan government has announced new controls on the prices of housing rents, while prices of medicines are also currently under review. Many basic goods in Venezuela are subject to price controls, including some food items and domestic goods, and the government has now added housing rents to the list of products subject to regulated pricing. In taking some pointers from "The Rent Is Too D*** High" party, Venezuela has decided to set a case to case price ceiling for the housing rental market. Most landlords will set the price based on construction costs, which tends to put tenants in a tight situation when looking for a somewhat temporary residence. Because of this, the government of Venezuela has forced landlords into setting prices only as high as what the Housing Ministry determines to be the true value product. Venezuela has also started doing this with medication, since medicine should be made available to all who are in need of it, although there has been backlash from pharmaceutical companies. They argument is that the artificial lowering of prices in the pharmaceutical industry will cause suppliers to produce less of the medicine than what the population needs.

This article discusses how The White House wanted to make its policy on price controls clear to Republicans in Congress, some of whom have been agitating for price controls. The president told Republican House deputy whips last week he would oppose all price controls, but the White House wanted to hit the message even harder.

A policy for the price control of certain medicines was approved by India's cabinet this week. The goal is to make medicine more affordable than it already is to the poor (producers argue that there is already sufficient competition in the market to keep prices low).

This article talks about how the Indian government is imposing price control on certain drugs to. The government claims that its is doing this to make it more affordable for the poor. They say this will also help patients become aware of less costly alternatives to some drugs.

the article is talking about how ex-president Bush decided not to control the price of energy, although the white house wanted to control energy prices.

This article gives a short briefing on how the Indian government are imposing price controls on a huge number of drugs in India. The new cabinet was forced by the Group of Ministers, and was also requested by the Indian Supreme Court, so it is obvious that this was necessary and quite urgent, as the court gave two weeks to fix the cause.

The government of Greece decided to put an old airport (twice as big as Central Park) for sale for 6 billion euros. In this way, the government would sell this old area to a private owner, therefore creating 9,000 jobs for Greece and helping the government and the country. We can say that this is price control, since the Greek government gave the price for the area, and is trying to stabilize/help the economy by creating a price for this area that could be used to help greatly Greece. In fact, not only jobs would be given but tourism would increase greatly (as well as the Greek income).

After Sandy hurricane devastated the Eastern Coast of the United States, gas became scarce. Due to this, authorities introduced so called odd-even gas rationing which limited the consumption the same as when governments introduce price ceilings and shift the demand curve to the last. With few major differences. Too many people needed fuel to power generators. Government gave subsidy to oil importers, so price slumped a bit (not significant) - so this was the maximum price. Simultaneously, also the demand grew bigger and there were only a few gas stations operating and those who were operating experienced inevitable chaos. So authorities shift the demand curve to the left until equilibrium is reached at maximum price to limit the consumption, so that queues were manageable. This rationing ends tomorrow as recovery is completed.

The article I chose deals with shortage of primary products in Venezuela. It first describes how the prices changed. Afterwards it shows that the government mada a maximum price on these products. It then describes the difficulties with inforcing a maximum price.

OTTAWA - The Harper government is set to propose a number of new measures to close the U.S.-Canada consumer price gap, including the possibility of extending the tariff relief offered on sports equipment in the last budget to consumer electronics and other products. Put pretty simply, it seems that global corporations are using different prices on sports equipment and what not between US and Canada. In order to combat this, the countries are lowering their tariffs in an attempt to allow businesses to pass the savings onto consumers. The article doesn't give much details on the situation, but this is definitely a good example of how the manipulation of protectionist import controls can be used to affect the market.

The article talks about the demand for more affordable homes, and how house prices rise and rise. It says that mean age for affording a home has risen to 35 due to the high prices. What Britain wants to do is to build more affordable houses, and they hope to make the economy better in that way.

This article shows examples of price control because it talks about how the indian government has lowered prices on most major drug brands there. This hurts india because there are less investors.