The War on Prices: How Popular Misconceptions about Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy

Was inflation’s recent spike exacerbated by corporate greed? Do rent controls really help the needy? Are U.S. health care prices set in a Wild West marketplace? Do women get paid less than men for the same work, and do they pay more than men for the same products? The War on Prices is an eye-opening book that answers all these burning questions and more, as top economists debunk popular misconceptions about inflation, prices, and value.

Market prices are under siege. The war on prices is waged most obviously with damaging government price controls and the harmful effects of central bank monetary mismanagement, as we saw with the recent inflation. Yet these bad policies are propped up by widespread, misguided public beliefs about the causes of inflation, the effects of price controls, and the inherent morality of market prices.

Breaking down these complex issues into three distinct sections―inflation, price controls, and value―this book both sheds light on long-standing contentions and brings economic theory and evidence to bear in today’s most contentious debates. Threaded through the book is a revealing truth: too many of us misunderstand the origin, role, and worth of market prices in our economy. The old insult goes that ＂economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing.＂ The War on Prices shows that good economists―and soon, you―can appreciate the value of unshackled market prices in delivering prosperity.

Ryan Bourne occupies the R. Evan Scharf Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics at the Cato Institute and is the author of Economics In One Virus: An Introduction to Economic Reasoning through COVID-19 (2021). He has written on numerous economic issues, including fiscal policy, inequality, minimum wages, infrastructure spending, the cost of living and rent control. Before joining Cato, Bourne was head of public policy at the Institute of Economic Affairs in the United Kingdom.