Terminology from Keynesian economics that refers to a sequence of alternations of official policy between trying to expand and contract effective demand. If the economy, when left alone, tended to produce alternating spells of depressed and excessive demand, stop–go policies could be defended as stabilizing. The suggestion of critics of ‘stop–go’ policies in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s was that the monetary and fiscal authorities applied the brakes and the accelerator alternately, in each case vigorously but too late. This set up tendencies to overshoot in each direction, destabilizing the economy. Stop–go policies were thus blamed for irregular growth.