En quels sens les coûts du capital sont-ils exorbitants? Que faire? De tous les coûts dont la crise accuse le poids relatif, coûts énergétiques et salariaux, frais généraux de bureaucratie et coûts financiers, ceux-ci sont présentés comme usuraires en regard des normes historiques et même internationales, comme mortels pour les investissements productifs et immobiliers dans les difficultés du moment.

The recent development of macroeconomic models with fixed prices and adjustment of quantities has shown the importance of considering the type of unemployment in the economy, since this determines the effects of economic policy decisions. The fundamental concept of this theory, namely fix-price equilibrium with quantity rationing, presents similarities with Walrasian equilibrium. Its interpretation is based on tatonnements on quantities instead of tatonnements on prices.

In recent times many western governments have either considered or actually applied some form of price regulation in order to combat an accelerating world wide inflation that has respected no one’s national boundaries. The price controls that were applied by governments pressured to take action have been typically collections of pragmatic administrative procedures, requiring the creation of their own operating bureaucracies. Often neither the original arguments that were raised in favor nor the resulting measures enacted were seen by economists as grounded in any coherent piece of orthodox economic theory. There has been many theoretical articles written about these aspects of price regulation, however, empirical studies attempting to discover the consequences of these systems at the level of the individual decision-makers involved have been few due to the unavailability of relevant data. This recent Belgian experience then offers a unique opportunity as a large volume of material has been made available for econometric study.