In economics, a price support may be either a subsidy, a production quota, or a price floor, each with the intended effect of keeping the market price of a good higher than the competitive equilibrium level, usually by a government.
In the case of a price control, a price support refers to the minimum legal price a seller may charge, typically placed above equilibrium. It is the support of certain price levels at or above market values by the government.
A price floor is a government- or group-imposed price control or limit on how low a price can be charged for a product, good, commodity, or service. It is one type of price support; other types include supply regulation and guarantee government purchase price. A price floor must be higher than the equilibrium price in order to be effective. The equilibrium price, commonly called the "market price", is the price where economic forces such as supply and demand are balanced and in the absence of external influences the (equilibrium) values of economic variables will not change, often described as the point at which quantity demanded and quantity supplied are equal (in a perfectly competitive market). Governments use price floors to keep certain prices from going too low.
Two common price floors are minimum wage laws and supply management in Canadian agriculture. Other price floors include regulated US airfares prior to 1978 and minimum price per-drink laws for alcohol. While price floors are often imposed by governments, there are also price floors which are implemented by non-governmental organizations such as companies, such as the practice of resale price maintenance. With resale price maintenance, a manufacturer and its distributors agree that the distributors will sell the manufacturer's product at certain prices (resale price maintenance), at or above a price floor (minimum resale price maintenance) or at or below a price ceiling (maximum resale price maintenance). A related government- or group-imposed intervention, which is also a price control, is the price ceiling; it sets the maximum price that can legally be charged for a good or service, with a common government-imposed example being rent control.
A subsidy, subvention or government incentive is a type of government expenditure which redistributes from tax payers to individuals, households, or businesses.Subsidies take various forms, such as direct government expenditures, tax incentives, soft loans, price support, and government provision of goods and services. For instance, the government may distribute direct payment subsidies to individuals and households during an economic downturn in order to help its citizens pay their bills and to stimulate economic activity.
Although commonly extended from the government, the term subsidy can relate to any type of support – for example from NGOs, or international organizations. Subsidies come in various forms including: direct (cash grants, interest-free loans) and indirect (tax breaks, insurance, low-interest loans, accelerated depreciation, rent rebates). Furthermore, they can be broad or narrow, legal or illegal, ethical or unethical. The most common forms of subsidies are those to the producer or the consumer.