Government Regulation.

As the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve is the institution in which the federal government and private banks do their banking.

Farm subsidies help control the price of crops, ensure farmers of a consistent income, and keep the United States free from dependence on foreign countries for its food supply.

The embargoes created an economic recession, but ultimately American industry became more reliant on the domestic market and less dependent on foreign trade.

Deregulation contributed to efficiency and innovation in the financial sector, but also to economic crises.

DDT’s ban signaled a new political strength for the growing environmental movement.

Daylight saving time was instituted in the United States as an energy-saving measure to allow people to take maximum advantage of available daylight.

The money supply is an important determinant of aggregate demand and business conditions in general.

Copyright law, which promotes and protects creative expression by rewarding authors and artists for their efforts with exclusive legal rights to control the use of their work, has played an important role in the development of the media, publishing, and entertainment industries.

Contracts are vital to and at the heart of business and business dealings. Millions of contracts are made and executed daily to facilitate the completion of work and the distribution of goods and services.

The U.S. Constitution provides a stable rule of law and an economic framework that makes American business and finance possible.

Along with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the Clayton Antitrust Act protected competition in the marketplace by proscribing various anticompetitive business practices.

Clay’s system helped define the nature and drive the development of U.S. business from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries.

Using its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to outlaw segregation in public accommodations involved in interstate commerce, to declare discrimination in employment illegal, and to establish the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

After losing more than $200 million in 1978 and nearly the same amount in just the first quarter of 1979, the Chrysler Corporation was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Child product safety laws, by requiring warning labels and prohibiting harmful components or design elements, protect young people from potentially dangerous toys and other products, while adding expenses to manufacturers creating and marketing those products.

Children were a cheap, submissive source of labor for textile, mining, glass, and other industries in the United States until the early twentieth century, when social reformbegan to produce legislation that protected children from unfair or unsafe working conditions and from other forms of exploitation by employers.

The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act was designed to give tax breaks to business owners and the upper class in an effort to stimulate the market.

Historically, American legislators have upheld national goals of economic growth and social mobility by passing bankruptcy laws more generous to debtors than those in most European countries.

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union—a “league of friendship” among the former colonies—were adopted by the Second Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, and went into effect on March 1, 1781, following state ratification.

The federal government’s Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 initiated federal antitrust policy and remained a legislative centerpiece for the following century.

The representatives at the Annapolis Convention decided that the Articles of Confederation needed to be replaced and that a constitutional convention should be held to reinvent the federal government.

Publicly mandated and private programs designed to increase employment and education opportunities for traditionally underserved or underrepresented groups, usually racial minorities and women.

The Taft-Hartley Act (Labor-Management Relations Act, 1947) attempted to reduce the power of organized labor in the United States through changes in the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act, 1935).

Supply-side economics centers on the idea that lower marginal tax rates increase peoples’ incentives to work. First articulated by economist Arthur Laffer in 1974, supply-side economics increases labor productivity by allowing workers to keep more of their added INCOME. This, in turn, increases taxable output and income, resulting in greater revenue for government.