Comparisons of price and quantity controls: A survey

The recent comparisons of price and quantity controls under uncertainty are reviewed with an eye toward discovering their unifying concepts. From the original comparison conducted by Weitzman through the more sophisticated studies of multiple producers, multiple goods, intermediate goods, and pollution, output variation emerges as that unifying link. When the control choice is important, the control that creates the better distribution of outputs in terms of magnitude and of correlation with the stochastic elements of the social loss function is preferred.