To manage an economy during a large-scale war, a popular viewpoint among scholars mandates the implementation of price controls. The reasons for this view are many and include inflation, war material production, and labor productivity. This study assesses the claim that price controls are a necessity during war. To do this a counterfactual argument was constructed that analyzed the economic efficiency of price controls against a free market during a large wartime event. Explicitly, the Union during the Civil War and the United States during World War II are compared. It is shown that the free market had a larger output for three goods: flour, coal, and wool. This positive counterfactual result means that the claim, which states that during war a price control market causes higher GDP, is false. Therefore, the viewpoint of scholarship where price controls are a necessity during a large war needs to be rejected or modified.

"That wartime prices are high prices is clearly revealed in Chart I of Wholesale Prices in the United States through Five Wars, 1800 - 1941. Indeed one is tempted to draw the purely empirical conclusion that the more intense and widespread, the longer a war lasts, the greater are bound to be price movements. [...]" --