Has corporate greed driven inflation in the European Union? An analysis of the food and beverage industry
通过分析2013-2022年88,717家欧洲食品饮料企业的数据，发现加价率随时间下降，且原材料价格与加价率负相关，不支持“贪婪通胀”假说。
• Markups in the food and beverage industry decrease over time • Negative relationship between markups and input prices • Larger companies exhibit higher markups • Negative correlation of markups and input prices is stronger for larger firms • We find no evidence for greedflation The EU has recently experienced high inflation rates, particularly in food prices. This observation led to claims in the news and by retailers that large food and beverage manufacturers take advantage of high inflation, and increase prices more than necessary (“greedflation”) to compensate for increases in their raw material prices. To test whether this claim is true, we estimate a production function to determine markups of output price over marginal costs for a sample of 88,717 European food and beverage manufactures covering the years 2013-2022. Our results do not support the greedflation hypothesis as markups have decreased over the considered period. In addition, there is a negative correlation between raw material prices and markups which is stronger for large firms, suggesting that these firms cannot be generally accused of taking advantage of high inflation. Our results imply that claimed “greedflation” does not justify additional pro-competitive policies in the food and beverage manufacturing sector.