Price Controls on Gasoline

John Fund in Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal Political Diary (subscription required) September 12, 2005

Includes: “Bill Lockyer, California's state attorney general, is leading an aggressive investigation into whether oil companies are violating the state's law limiting price increases for gasoline to 10% over a 30-day period.”

“UCLA economist Mark Kleiman, a self-confessed liberal, is appalled by the economic ignorance of those pursuing ‘price gougers.’ ‘At any price below the market-clearing level, buyers will want to buy more gasoline than sellers have to sell,’ he writes. ‘The result is either waiting in line, which is a very inefficient means of rationing compared to letting the price rise, or some sort of legal rationing system.’ Either way, consumers wind up worse off than if they pay the higher prices until more supplies come on line.”

See Prior Posts:
Washington Post Editorial on Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)
“Ireland today is the richest country in the European Union after Luxembourg”
Are Oil Prices a Crisis?
Our 'No Risk' Mentality Demands the Impossible