A laissez-faire economy is an economy in which government intervention is kept to a minimum and market forces are allowed to rule. The term, attributed to the French merchant J Gourlay, is best translated as 'let people do as they think best'. Laissez-faire policies were popular with western governments until the time of John Keynes, when mass unemployment caused them to become discredited. During the stagflation of the late 1960s and 1970s they became, once again, fashionable. Research Laissez-faire Economy
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Abbreviations
Research Laissez-faire Economy
