Scholar4AI

← Research ideas

SeedPublished 2026-10-23

Markups and the inflation of 2021–2023

Market power, price setting and markups appear on 186 recent papers, but only 8 of them carry an inflation keyword. The claim that firms used the inflation surge to raise margins ("greedflation") shaped policy debates. Did markups rise, in which sectors, and did they fall back?

economicsmacroeconomicscompetition

What prompted this

Since October 2025, 186 papers carry a markup, profit-margin, price-setting or market-power keyword (107 in economics journals, 35 in finance): "market power" on 87, "price setting" on 34, "markups" on 29. Only 8 of them also carry an inflation keyword, although "inflation" appears on 211 papers in the archive.

Questions

  • Using firm-level data, did markups rise during 2021–2023 beyond what cost pass-through explains, and did they fall when costs eased?
  • Were margin increases concentrated in sectors with supply shortages, with few competitors, or with fast price changes?
  • Did consumers' expectations of price increases make it easier for firms to raise prices in step?

Data that could help

Firm accounts with cost and revenue (Compustat, Orbis), producer and consumer price indices by sector, and estimates of markups from production functions.

Next step

Estimate quarterly markups for listed firms by sector for 2019–2025 and compare their path with input cost indices.

Related research activity

The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26
KeywordPapers, last 30 daysRankPapers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26*Papers, last 36 months
markups4#52559
market power4#525215
inflation14#67501

Markdown version of this note: /ideas/markups-and-inflation.md

← Marriage markets with too few brides · Detecting market manipulation at machine speed →

Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Markups and the inflation of 2021–2023. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/markups-and-inflation

@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-markups-and-inflation,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Markups and the inflation of 2021–2023},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/markups-and-inflation}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}

Free to reuse for non-commercial purposes with attribution (CC BY-NC 4.0).