<P> A classic example of how price controls cause shortages was during the Arab oil embargo between October 19, 1973 and March 17, 1974 . Long lines of cars and trucks quickly appeared at retail gas stations in the U.S. and some stations closed because of a shortage of fuel at the low price set by the U.S. Cost of Living Council . The fixed price was below what the market would otherwise bear and, as a result, the inventory disappeared . It made no difference whether prices were voluntarily or involuntarily posted below the market clearing price . Scarcity resulted in either case . Price controls fail to achieve their proximate aim, which is to reduce prices paid by retail consumers, but such controls do manage to reduce supply . </P> <P> Nobel prize winner Milton Friedman said "We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage . If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can't sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound . Instantly you'll have a tomato shortage . It's the same with oil or gas ." </P> <P> U.S. President Richard Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury, George Shultz, enacting Nixon's "New Economic Policy," lifted price controls that had begun in 1971 (part of the Nixon Shock). This lifting of price controls resulted in a rapid increase in prices . Price freezes were re-established five months later . Stagflation was eventually ended in the United States when the Federal Reserve under chairman Paul Volcker raised interest rates to unusually high levels . This successfully ended high inflation but caused a recession that ended in the early 1980s . </P>

The​ government's imposition of a price control