Recent Blog Posts
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The Times' Rorshach Geithner Story
Apr 27 20099:04am EDT -
Sinking Animal Spirits
Apr 27 20098:04am EDT -
Counter-cyclical Urban Policy
Apr 26 200910:04am EDT -
Be Your Own Counterfeiter
Apr 26 20099:04am EDT -
Being Tim Geithner
Apr 25 200912:04pm EDT -
Notes From a Press Conference Naif
Apr 25 20099:04am EDT -
What Good is the News?
Apr 25 20098:04am EDT -
Stressful Enough
Apr 24 20092:04pm EDT -
Not Regretting the Pound
Apr 24 20091:04pm EDT -
Introducing the New Ford Squeeze
Apr 24 20099:04am EDT -
Non-Economic Questions of the Day
Apr 24 20099:04am EDT -
The Stress Test Blind Alley
Apr 24 20098:04am EDT -
Happy Hour
Apr 23 20099:04pm EDT -
Recovery Without Rebalancing
Apr 23 20096:04pm EDT -
The Shape of Your Recession
Apr 23 20095:04pm EDT
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The Return of Price Controls
In a move described by Dresdner Kleinwort as "even more predictable than the price surge that triggered it", Russia has decided to impose price controls on elected types of bread, cheese, milk, eggs and vegetable oil; the fourth word of the FT article is "Soviet-style". But in fact price controls are not solely the domain of autocratic regimes: Argentina, which had its a vibrant election yesterday, has been imposing them for some time.
Economists hate price controls, and for good reason: not only do they not work in theory, they also don't work in practice. But it does seem as though the global commodities boom, especially in the agricultural sector, must shoulder most of the blame for this latest spate of price controls. They never really went away: there was just no need for them during the Great Moderation.
