ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the French government and local business owners affect the pricing mechanism in various markets. It contends that ill-conceived government policies and predatory business behaviour harmed consumers and destabilized already fragile economies. The chapter addresses the gaps in the literature by analysing the main causes of the high cost of living in the French Caribbean economies. It underlines the ineffectiveness of government policies. The French government policy turned out to be both legally non-existent in terms of anti-trust and financially counterproductive in Guadeloupe and Martinique, which inevitably constituted a major source of high cost of living. The chapter identifies four major factors of high prices that greatly inflate the cost of living in the French Caribbean islands, namely taxation, public sector hypertrophy and anti-competitive market organization along with failure to enforce anti-trust laws. French Caribbean economies do not necessarily require more government, just better governance and stricter regulations.
