In 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic abated, global inflation rates began to rise. A year later, they peaked at 8.7% (IMF, 2023), with higher rates observed in the US, UK and Eurozone (Galeone and Gros, 2023). The inflation crisis, as it was dubbed, divided mainstream economic opinion regarding the key macroeconomic drivers and correct policy responses to stabilise price levels. Some argued that the crisis arose from a combination of excessive pandemic fiscal stimuluses ‘overheating’ economies, alongside tight labour markets driving up wages in the aftermath of lockdowns. These inflation hawks advocated vociferously to raise interest rates to increase unemployment and ‘cool’ demand. Others disagreed, blaming inflation on exogenous shocks to the global economy: supply chain bottlenecks as the global economy disjointedly rebooted after the pandemic, and the rapid rise in wholesale prices of energy and food staples after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These inflation doves, apprehensive of the impact higher interest rates would have on their economies, placed faith in the market’s ability to self-correct.

However, as millions of consumers across advanced economies struggled to cope with the aggregate rise in consumer prices, corporate profits soared to 70-year highs (Boesler, 2022). For both to occur simultaneously seemed counterintuitive and antithetical to properly functioning capitalism, prompting top financiers to question ‘is capitalism dead?’ (Edwards, 2023). Weber and Wasner’s theory of seller’s inflation provides an answer to this phenomenon, contending that the inflation crisis was amplified by corporate profiteering. Seller’s inflation ensues when firms intentionally use consumer’s imperfect pricing information, generated by initial inflationary shocks, as a smokescreen to raise prices beyond cost increases, reaping higher profits. Unlike demand-driven inflation, this form of price growth is driven by corporate pricing power and profit-seeking, especially in concentrated industries where firms face little to no meaningful competition. Studies show that increased corporate markups the percentage added to cost to set a selling price, and an indication of a firm’s market power—were a primary driver of post pandemic inflation, as powerful companies seized the opportunity to expand profit margins under the guise of rising costs. However, given competition is a core principle of capitalism, driving efficiency, innovation, and lower prices, it begs the question: how did market concentration become so significant that it could severely amplify inflation?

Rather than an aberration, seller’s inflation demonstrated the deeper structural forces that underpin neoliberal capitalism. Over the past 40 years, neoliberal economic policies—particularly deregulation, privatisation, and lax antitrust enforcement—have favoured corporate consolidation, allowing dominant firms to out-compete or acquire rivals. Consequently, highly concentrated markets across key industries have given corporations monopolistic pricing power, wage suppression leverage, and political influence, ultimately undermining the competitive ideals neoliberalism claims to promote. Market concentration has contributed to widening economic inequality in advanced economies as, while wages stagnated, corporate profits increased, thus diminishing labour’s share of GDP. With trade unions’ bargaining power weakened to promote ‘labour market flexibility’ (Hathaway, 2020), capital captured a disproportionate share of economic gains, reinforcing a cycle in which corporate and financial elites exert growing influence over policy and society. Therefore, corporate profiteering during the inflation crisis, and the seismic wealth transfer from labour to capital it engendered, was a product of—and intertwined—with neoliberalism. Full understanding of this crisis requires its contextualisation within the broader international political economy, where decades of neoliberal reforms concentrated corporate power, weakened labour, and prioritised market-driven solutions over equitable economic policies.

Aims, Research Question and Outline

This dissertation has two aims: firstly, to advance the veracity of seller’s inflation as a key economic phenomenon, ensuring future inflation crises—likely, in this age of polycrisis (Tooze, 2020)—are met with more effective monetary and fiscal policies. Second, it intends to bridge the gap between inflation, corporate profiteering, and neoliberal critique, highlighting how the wealth transfer during the inflation crisis demonstrates neoliberalism’s propensity to siphon wealth from labour to capital. Therefore, this study asks: what can the post-pandemic inflation crisis tell us about the power of corporations in neoliberal political economy?

The following study is divided into three sections. Firstly, the literature review shall provide historical background and theoretical frameworks for neoliberalism and inflation. These will be contrasted with the contemporary critique of neoliberal political economy, such as its propensity to concentrate markets, influence political systems and generate inequality. Furthermore, seller’s inflation will be evaluated as a pertinent counter-theory to the mainstream inflation debate, challenging conventional fiscal and monetary policies in combating inflation. The second section shall focus on empirical analysis of seller’s inflation, specifically on higher profit margins, increased mark-ups and their relationship with firms operating in concentrated sectors between 2021 and 2023 across advanced economies. This quantitative data will be supplemented by secondary qualitative data, namely direct quotes and statements from a range of senior bankers, politicians and financiers, which further evidence the amplification of inflation by corporate profiteering. Finally, the discussion shall relate corporate profiteering to the broader critique of neoliberal political economy, framing this as a perpetuation of previous trends and a raw demonstration of corporate power. Focus will be drawn to the lack of adequate scrutiny or accountability held to corporations during the crisis, the wealth transfer generated by corporate profiteering, and state policies that further burdened working people.

Literature Review

The following literature review aims to explore key theories and concepts pertinent to this dissertation and investigate the relevant debates surrounding them. By taking a thematic approach, the inflation crisis can be contextualised within wider discussions surrounding the inefficiencies, contradictions and projections of neoliberal political economy. Section one will detail the history and theory of neoliberal political economy and explore arguments surrounding its propensity to generate higher levels of market concentration, influence the political sphere and economic inequality. Section two shall discuss the concept and causes of inflation, alongside the contemporary debate between economists regarding the main drivers and policy recommendations of the 2021–2023 inflation crisis.

Neoliberalism

To understand the dynamics of market concentration that allowed for corporate profiteering during the inflation crisis, we must examine the literature behind neoliberalism and free market ideology. Neoliberalism has been the dominant political and economic doctrine across most advanced economies for over forty years and has therefore been analysed extensively. However, defining neoliberalism is often controversial, as it is not a codified ideology, and its terminology is frequently used as a diffuse catch-all regarding modern political economy. Nevertheless, as Hathaway (2020) notes, it does retain meaning. For the purposes of this dissertation, Kotz’s definition (2010) of neoliberalism suitably encapsulates the main thrust of its core tenets:

…a body of economic theory and a policy stance. Neoliberal theory claims that a largely unregulated capitalist system (a “free market economy”) not only embodies the ideal of free individual choice but also achieves optimum economic performance with respect to efficiency, economic growth, technical progress, and distributional justice. (p. 306)

The theoretical and ideological underpinnings of neoliberalism are often attributed to Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Hayek’s seminal work, The Road to Serfdom (1944), is credited as one of the fundamental texts contributing to the rise of neoliberal thought in the 20th century. It was written as a critique of socialist and Keynesian economics; Hayek viewed their economic planning and emphasis on equality as ultimately totalitarian and ruinous for democracy. Hayek argued for free markets and a limited role for the state as state intervention distorts market efficiency regarding allocating and distributing goods and services and limits individual freedom. Free markets are thus essential, in Hayek’s view, to freedom, as ‘our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another’ (Hayek, 1944: p. 67). Hayek’s conflation between economic freedom and political and individual freedom is a central justification for neoliberal political economy. Friedman, a disciple of Hayek’s at the Chicago School of Economics, built upon this claim. In Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Friedman argues that the role of the state is limited to ‘protecting our freedom both from the enemies outside our gates and from our fellow-citizens’ (p. 2) and ‘to preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, and to foster competitive markets’ (p. 2). His assertions largely aimed to push back on reigning Keynesian mixed economies, which championed government intervention in the economy.

The economic theories of John Maynard Keynes (1936) were adopted by the US and UK governments to restructure their economies in the aftermath of the Great Depression, whereby the failings of unfettered capitalism were glaringly exposed. After the Second World War, Keynesianism underpinned social democratic governance, which typified most Western nations until the 1970s, a period known as the Golden Age of Capitalism (Marglin and Schor, 1990). The social democratic compromise between governments, capital and highly unionised labour forces protected citizens from the more deleterious aspects of capitalism and led to a reduction in economic inequality (Berman and Snegovaya, 2019). Keynesianism prioritised government intervention in the economy, primarily through fiscal policies, infrastructure investment and welfare spending, with the goal of managing aggregate demand. In theory, government spending was necessary during economic downturns to stimulate demand and create jobs, thereby avoiding deep recessions like the Great Depression. Keynesian theory emphasised the Philip’s Curve, which theorised an inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment. Thus, governments believed they could fine-tune their economies, primarily through discretionary government spending and taxation policies, to reach a balanced trade-off between the inflation rate and unemployment, prioritising full employment so economies operated at maximum productive capacity. However, during the 1970s stagflation period, whereby advanced economies were beset by rising unemployment, stagnant economic growth and high inflation, much of Keynesian economic theory was discredited, particularly the Philip’s Curve (Zinn, 2013). Keynesianism had no answer to the simultaneous rise in inflation and unemployment, as government intervention via fiscal stimuluses to boost aggregate demand would only exacerbate inflation rates. Though stagflation was arguably precipitated by the 1970s energy crisis, which saw the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo to the West, unions and workers were blamed for exacerbating inflation through a wage-price spiral. This phenomenon occurs when workers demand higher wages to recoup their lost purchasing power eroded by inflation—typically through the collective bargaining process. However, higher wages incur higher costs for firms, forcing them to raise prices further, creating a cyclical relationship that pushes prices ever higher. Resultantly, this helped justify neoliberal efforts to undermine trade union power, which has declined substantially since the neoliberal pivot (Blinder and Rudd, 2010).

The stagflation crisis offered neoliberalism its first chance to have a significant impact on public policy (Josifidis et al, 2013). As Friedman (1962) famously declared, ‘only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change… when that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around’ (p. 9). The supplanting of Keynesianism by neoliberalism is widely attributed to the elections of Reagan and Thatcher and the ensuing Volker Shock, which aimed to tame inflation by raising interest rates to historic highs, thus marking the implementation of monetarism. Counter to the Keynesian concept of inflation, which arose from both supply and demand factors and required active demand-management, Friedman’s monetarism contended ‘inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon’ (Friedman, 1960). In Friedman’s, A Programme for Monetary Stability (1960), he attributes inflation solely to ‘too much money chasing too few goods’ and argues that curbing the money supply via higher interest rates will curtail inflation to manageable levels. In simple terms, ‘inflation was simply a matter of the excessive expansion of the money supply, which inflated demand and led to generalised inflation’ (Clarke, 1988: p. 323). By raising interest rates, businesses and consumers spend less due to the increased cost of servicing debt, resulting in a contraction or ‘cooling’ of the economy. In turn, the unemployment rate increases, reducing demand and investment in the economy. This acts as a restraint on the prospect of a wage-price spiral, as higher unemployment reduces labour’s bargaining power. The Volker Shock was successful in curbing inflation; however, it also precipitated a deep recession and unprecedented rise in unemployment levels (McCarthy, 2016). Nevertheless, this period saw a consolidation of neoliberal economics, policies and ideology that diffused across the world. Neoliberalism provided the ideological and policy framework that drove globalisation, making neoliberal logic and rationality ‘the ruling ideas of the time’ (Harvey, 2005: 36).

Neoliberalism’s tenets of freedom and free markets have come under much scrutiny. Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation (1944), offers a powerful critique of unregulated markets, as he argues that ‘the full functioning of a self-regulating market would result in the demolition of society’ (p. 76). He points out the conflation of free markets with freedom,

degenerates into a mere advocacy for free enterprise…. This means the fullness of freedom for those whose income, leisure, and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for the people who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property. (p. 265)

Contemporary Marxist theorist David Harvey further agrees, in A brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), that the 1970s neoliberal pivot away from the redistributive, Keynesian model was merely a return to the form of capitalism that had previously presided. Harvey says, ‘neoliberalization has been a vehicle for the restoration of class power though the new elite class is managers and financiers rather than owners of the means of production’ (p. 31). Since the onset of neoliberal policies in major advanced economies, wealth and income inequality has increased, trade unions have been repressed, and labour’s share of national incomes has diminished in relation to that of capital. However, further analysis of neoliberalism in practice highlights the contradiction between supposed advocacy for free markets and the reality of corporate power and market concentration (Bruff 2023; Hardin, 2012; Sawyer, 2022; Hathaway, 2020). Hardin refers to this as corporism, whereby the only distinguishing feature of neoliberalism from previous iterations of unfettered capitalism is ‘the privileging of the form and position of corporations’ (p. 99). In The Strange Death of Neoliberalism (2011), Colin Crouch furthers the corporism hypothesis by highlighting neoliberal policies such as privatisation and deregulation, which, far from engendering free markets, allowed corporations more market share and created barriers to market-entry for others. Mirowski (2013) argues neoliberalism effectively amounts to the ‘totally uncritical acceptance of oligopolistic corporations, whose dominance prevents markets from working in the perfect information-processing way that the core of neoliberal theory requires’ (p. 51). As markets concentrate, it consolidates unprecedented wealth and power in the hands of large firms and shareholders. The paradox of the neoliberal system, which propagates the virtues of the free market whilst facilitating ever-concentrated market powers, shall be a significant focus of this dissertation.

There has been extensive literature analysing ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ (Hardin, 2012) and its propensity for generating concentrated markets and monopolistic competition. The unfettered form of capitalism that neoliberalism represents has repeatedly been argued to inevitably lead to monopoly practices. Karl Marx presciently predicted competitive markets was an impermanent period for capitalism, as capitalist logic dictated that firms seek less competition and bigger market shares. Marx wrote, ‘the larger capitals beat the smaller…. [C]ompetition rages in direct portion to the number and in inverse proportion to the magnitude of the rival capitals’ (Marx, 1867: p. 343). In accordance with Marx’s theory of monopoly-capitalism, Meagher (2020) writes, ‘markets inexorably tend toward concentration, and we seem incapable of enforcing the restraint to prevent the accumulation of money and power’ (p. 20). This observation was vindicated by President Roosevelt’s anti-trust policies in the 1930s, which aimed to curtail the power of American monopolists. This was seen as vital in de-concentrating economic power to redistribute economic gains and quash corporate influence over government and policymaking. Monopolies were thus viewed as antithetical to well-functioning capitalism and therefore government competition policy was needed to ensure the smooth running of markets. Theorists of monopoly-capitalism have come to blame the neoliberal secular stagnation—persistently low growth and weak demand—on over-accumulation by big firms and correspondingly less productivity and innovation than expected in competitive markets (Sawyer, 2023).However, in Reinventing Monopoly and the Role of Corporations (2009), Van Horn demonstrates a new take on monopolies, formulated by the Chicago School, which pushed back on the need for government intervention to mitigate capitalism’s tendency towards market concentration. He shows neoliberalism shifted the attitude from viewing monopolies as a danger to free market society that required government intervention, to a ‘benign phenomena that functioned ‘as if’ they were competitive’ (p. 219). Neoliberal economists like Friedman (1962) argued ‘private monopoly, as opposed to public monopoly or public regulation, is the least of the evils’ (Hardin, 2012), thus downplaying the risks of monopolies in comparison to the risk of government intervention in the economy.

There is a significant body of literature highlighting the growing concentration of markets and monopolistic behaviours since neoliberal policies were adopted. An OECD report (Bajgar et al, 2019) found concentration increasing in 77% of two-digit industries in Europe and 74% in North America between 2000-2014. Khan and Vaheesan (2017) show many US sectors are dominated by large firms that engage in monopolistic practices. They outline how monopoly pricing on goods and services by these firms acts as an aggregate transfer of wealth, as it ‘turns the disposable income of the many into capital gains, dividends, and executive compensation for the few’ (p. 236). De Loecker (et al, 2020) furthers this study by highlighting how mark-ups have increased since 1980. They found higher mark-ups were evident in firms that have increased market share, whilst smaller firms have seen no increase and a diminished market share (p. 562). Cairo and Sim (2020) show that concentrated markets aid the transfer of wealth from capital to labour not only via higher mark-ups, but importantly, by lowering wages and reducing investment to maximise shareholder returns. Proponents of neoliberalism argue this is precisely what a corporation is supposed to do, and the ‘social responsibility of business is to increase its profits’ (Friedman, 1970). Some business groups have come to promote stakeholder capitalism (Freeman, 1984) and corporate social responsibility, whereby firms would consider the interests of all stakeholders, such as employees and customers. However, this has been criticised for being an empty promise to appear virtuous (Reich, 2021).

Observers often lament that market concentration is attributable to the co-optation of the political sphere by powerful economic interests. Not only have neoliberal governments imbibed the attitude they should ‘get out of the way’ of markets (Innes, 2021), corporations take the opposite attitude towards politics. Hellman (et al, 2020) coined the term ‘corporate state capture’, whereby big firms successfully permeate through the political sphere to shape legislation in their favour and extract rents. As Hathaway (2020) highlights, ‘corporations have worked extensively to influence the political arena’ (p. 325), evidenced by the rise of the multi-billion-dollar lobbying and campaign donation industry in the US and Europe since the 1970s. Additionally, corporations have forwarded pro-corporate ideas through funding thinktanks, promoting their own research to combat public research, encouraging the revolving door between business and government and using their power to disseminate favourable narratives in the news media (Hathaway, 2020). The political complacency and lack of scrutiny of private enterprise has its roots in the neoliberal faith that markets ‘will lead us to the Promised Land of seamless allocative efficiency’ (Innes, 2021). The unquestioning attitude amongst public officials that private enterprise, and the axiomatic reflex that what is good for business must also benefit society in neoliberal economies, will be scrutinised as a leading cause for how profiteering during the inflation crisis was able to transpire.

Market concentration is criticised for significantly contributing to widening economic inequality in advanced economies. In a 2017 study, researchers from the OECD (Ennis et al, 2017) analysed market power and inequality data across eight OECD countries—Canada, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, Spain, the UK and the US—and found a direct correlation between market power and widening inequality. Market power augmented the ‘wealth of the richest 10% of the population by 12% to 21% for an average country in the sample’ whilst ‘may also depress the income of the poorest 20% of the population by between 14% and 19%’ (Ennis et al, 2017: p. 23). This analysis is substantiated by theories put forward in Thomas Picketty’s celebrated work Capital in the 21st Century (2014). Picketty argues that, when the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of economic growth, wealth becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of the wealthy. Concentrated markets play a critical role in facilitating this, as they produce higher profits to predominantly wealthy shareholders whilst simultaneously hampering economic growth through reduced investment, higher consumer prices and lower wages. Following years of stagnating wages, the neoliberal assertion that wealth will ‘trickle down’ to the rest of society has been fundamentally discredited (Picketty, 2014). Picketty points to secular stagnation, corresponding increases in wealth for the top strata of capitalist societies, and the rise of the super-rich as compelling evidence for this theory. Importantly, the neoliberal period has seen a reversal of labour’s previously rising share of GDP. In advanced economies, this often exceeded 60% of GDP in the 1960s and 70s but has steadily declined to little over 50% in 2024 (Strauss, 2024).

The Inflation Debate

Inflation is broadly understood to be a sustained rise in prices across a reasonably wide swathe of the economy, creating a corresponding decrease in real purchasing power. However, the longstanding economic debate surrounding the main macroeconomic contributing factors inducing inflation failed to reach such a broad consensus (Totonchi, 2011)—as the old lament goes, ‘if you ask two economists a question you will get three different answers’ (Chetty, 2013). The post-pandemic inflation crisis and its causal underpinnings revived the inflation debate, dividing orthodox opinion into two camps: Team Transitory and Team Persistent. Team Persistent consisted of economists and policy makers (Cochrane, 2022; Summers, 2021; Ball, et al, 2022) who came out vociferously in favour of the monetarist theory of inflation and blamed higher price levels on the fiscal stimulus packages handed out during the pandemic. As lockdowns ended, they argued it increased aggregate demand beyond supply and overheated the economy. Summers (2021) surmised the pandemic fiscal spending as ‘the least responsible macroeconomic policy we have had in the last 40 years.’ Consequently, interest rates were raised to stifle rising inflation, as carried out by central banks across advanced economies to levels not seen since before the 2008 global financial crash. Believing post-lockdown labour markets were tight, these economists warned of rising wages fuelling a wage-price spiral, and pushed to suppress pay increases. Team Persistent went on to say it would be necessary to induce mass unemployment to effectively ‘cool’ the economy and bring inflation back under control (Summers, 2021; Ball et al, 2022).

‘Team Transitory’, however, maintained rising inflation was attributable to shocks to aggregate supply—principally, exogenous shocks to the global economy following global supply chain disruptions due to lockdowns, and increased energy and food staple prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Joseph Stiglitz and Ira Regmi’s Causes and Responses to Today’s Inflation (2022) critiqued the main monetarist view, that excessive aggregate demand requires a policy response of raising interest rates, as incorrect. They show ‘real personal consumption has largely been below trend… and total real aggregate demand has been consistently below trend’ (p. 3). They contend that the pandemic shifted demand from services to durable goods—people quitting the gym and buying Peletons, for example—just as there was a collapse in supply chains in durable goods (Stiglitz and Regmi, 2022; Bivens, 2024). The Economic Policy Institute (2022) compared the US pandemic fiscal response to other smaller government interventions in advanced economies. They found that, despite different fiscal responses, each country faced the same rapid acceleration in core inflation (Bivens et al, 2022). Furthermore, analysis of labour markets indicated they were not as tight as monetarists feared. Years of anti-union legislation, particularly in the UK and US, eroded labour’s bargaining power, reducing the likelihood of a wage-price spiral. Ferguson and Storm’s research (2023) corroborates these findings and argues the perceived tight labour market was largely attributable to shifts in the labour market because of Covid-19 and mainly confined to low-paid service jobs. Additionally, nominal wages failed to keep up with inflation across advanced economies (NIESR, 2024; Adrjan et al, 2025), further denouncing any concerns of a 1970s wage-price spiral. Considering this analysis, Team Transitory argued government intervention should have focussed on helping resolve the supply issues to hasten the correction of markets, thus avoiding higher interest rates.

The theory of seller’s inflation (Wasner and Weber, 2022) contends that supply-side determined inflation was less transitory than original projections due to corporate profiteering. The theory stipulates that supply shocks and the corresponding ‘rising prices in systemically significant upstream sectors due to commodity market dynamics’ (Wasner and Weber, 2022: p. 1) led firms in concentrated markets, or with temporary monopoly power due to supply bottlenecks, to increase prices beyond their rise in costs. Market concentration is essential to this opportunistic pricing strategy, as fewer competitors make it easier to inflate prices without losing customers. Furthermore, with whole sectors dominated by just a handful of competitors, it allows for tacit collusion between firms: they do not explicitly coordinate but still follow each other’s price hikes to maintain high profits as they implicitly understand that maintaining high prices benefits them all. As a result, ‘firms in some sectors… can raise prices by enough to enhance profit margins, resulting in an amplification of cost shocks’ (2022: p. 3). When these significant ‘upstream’ sectors engage in price gauging, it forces ‘downstream businesses to jack up prices too just to meet their costs’ (p. 19). Macroeconomists’ theories of the drivers of inflation assumed that markets were operating more or less competitively. However, seller’s inflation’s focus on microeconomic conditions shows concentrated markets have allowed large firms to become ‘price makers’ (p. 19), thus facilitating corporate profiteering. To substantiate this theory, the researchers reviewed American survey earnings calls and compiled firm-level data from 2021, which strongly indicated large firms increased their markups during the inflation crisis. These findings were further corroborated by Konczal and Lusiani’s (2022) analysis of 2021 firm-level markups, which found ‘markups and profits skyrocketed in 2021 to their highest recorded level since the 1950s’ (Konczal and Lusiani, 2022: p. 1). Numerous economists and financial institutions (Stiglitz, 2022; Arquiéa and Thiea, 2023; IMF, 2023; European Central Bank, 2023) have since acknowledged that excess corporate profits significantly increased inflation during the crisis. Given the likelihood of further exogenous shocks to the global economy (Weber and Wasner, 2022) it is critical for policymakers to understand this phenomenon—this would avoid needlessly harmful policies such as raising interest rates and facilitate the use of more targeted measures (Mastromatteo and Rossi, 2023).

Empirical Review of Seller’s Inflation

The following section shall draw upon empirical data supporting the theory of seller’s inflation and analyse the extent to which corporate profiteering amplified inflation in advanced economies between 2021-2023. Data will be gathered from a variety of studies, primarily conducted by think tanks, policy institutes, trade unions and central banks. Primary source analysis will also be used as compelling supplementary evidence of the scale of corporate profiteering during the crisis. In theory, confronted with rising input costs, firms had three choices: absorb some or all the extra costs themselves, pass on higher costs to customers one-for-one, or increase prices more than the increase in costs to improve profit margins. Therefore, to substantiate seller’s inflation, emphasis will be placed on evidence of higher profit margins and markups during the crisis. Importantly, an increase in profits could be attributed to an increase in sales volume, as revenue is inviolably a sum of prices multiplied by units sold. However, this can be discounted, as the number of units sold decreased during the inflation crisis, leaving higher prices responsible for rising revenue and profits (Owens, 2024; Sindreu, 2023; Gyauch-Lewis, 2023). Importantly, ‘sellers’ inflation is not possible in a perfectly competitive economy, but in a highly concentrated economy in which large firms are price makers, it is a real possibility’ (2022: p. 19). Therefore, particular attention will be paid to firms operating in concentrated sectors, noting patterns of correspondingly larger increases in profit margins. By focussing on the effects of seller’s inflation across advanced economies, the issue will be contextualised against the backdrop of neoliberal political economy. As such, this is demonstrably not a phenomenon isolated to one or two states but is evidenced where neoliberal reforms have been enacted the strongest and have gone deepest. Furthermore, the analysis shall observe the extent to which seller’s inflation exacerbated prior wealth trends, amounting to a major net wealth transfer from labour to capital. Lastly, the following evidence shall aim to dispel lingering claims that seller’s inflation lacks empirical support, is unfounded, or is ideologically biased and dismissed as ‘dangerous left-wing nonsense’ (Jessop, 2023).

USA

The correlated rise in inflation alongside record-high profits led American researchers to explore potential causation between the two. Several notable studies strongly evidence the outsized role of profits in fuelling inflationary pressures in the US between 2021-2023. Groundwork Collaborative, an American non-profit progressive economic think tank, found corporate profits were responsible for around 40% of total inflation in America, which had previously only contributed 11% to price increases in the 40 years prior to the pandemic (Owens, 2024). Their research showed firms justified the need to raise prices with the increased cost of essential inputs, particularly energy and ‘upstream’ commodities, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the outbreak of war in Ukraine. However, many firms managed to push the entirety of their increased costs onto consumers without fearing a reduction in demand, and in many instances managed to raise prices even further. As Storm (2023) noted, ‘it is impossible, in other words, to explain the growth of the U.S. profit share in recent times while ignoring the steady increase in the (average) profit markup’. Konczal and Lusiani (2022) documented the historic increase in average American corporate markups, which had gradually increased from 26% between 1970-1980 to 56% by the 2010s. However, in 2021, such markups rose to an average of 72% above marginal costs, marking an unprecedented and accelerated increase in the 40-year trend. These findings were corroborated by the Kansas City Federal Bank, whose research found markup growth contributed 50% to inflation in 2021 (Glover; et al, 2023).

Most profit and markup increase occurred in more concentrated markets with larger firms. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (2022) concluded the 50% increase in market concentration in the USA since 2005 contributed to the amplification of pass-through costs to consumers. They found concentrated markets were responsible for 25% higher pass-through costs due to rising input prices after the pandemic. Konczal and Lusiani (2022) concur with these findings, adding market power was the biggest contributor to higher markups. As chief economist of the Economic Policy Institute, Josh Bivens (2022) commented, ‘a chronic excess of corporate power has built up over a long period of time, and it manifested in the current recovery as an inflationary surge in prices rather than successful wage suppression’. As the White House National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard (2023) acknowledged, between 2021-2023 the American labour share of GDP had dropped below pre-pandemic levels, whilst corporate profits as a share of GDP were the highest since the post-war period. Furthermore, numerous big firms justified higher markups by claiming the tactic pre-empted future cost shocks. However, when input costs eventually came down, they did not pass these savings onto consumers, instead reaping even higher returns. For example, Procter and Gamble and Kimberly-Clark Corp controlled 70% of the domestic diaper market. Diaper prices increased 30% between 2019-2023 due to higher costs of wood pulp, a critical input. However, despite the cost of wood pulp declining by 25% in 2023, prices remained high, allowing for P&G and Kimberly-Clark to considerably expand their profit margins (Owens, 2024). The issue of market concentration and abnormal profits was neatly encapsulated in Robert Reich’s testimony to Congress in 2022:

They are not raising prices solely because of the increasing costs of supplies and components and of labour…. Corporations enjoying record profits in a healthy competitive economy would absorb these costs. Why? Because they can. And they can because they don’t face meaningful competition. (p. 2)

UK

Similar studies analysing the drivers of inflation in the UK showed the country’s inflation rate was amplified by corporate profiteering to an even greater degree (IPPR, 2023). Unite the Union, one of the first organisations to call out profiteering during the crisis in 2021, produced several reports highlighting the link between higher profits and inflation. Their analysis of the accounts of 17000 companies showed corporate margins increased by an average of 30% from 2018/19 levels (Unite, 2024). For the largest firms in the top 10% of profitability, profit margins increased from 6.5% to 8.6% after the pandemic (Unite, 2024). Amongst the biggest profiteers were firms operating in oligopolistic sectors, such as energy generation and supermarkets. These sectors were particularly vulnerable to global price increases in commodities such as gas and food staples. However, as supply issues eased from mid-2022 to 2023, these sectors kept their prices high even as their costs fell. Electricity generation companies’ profit increased 198% in 2022; Unite calculated that, had the energy sector been in public ownership, the rate of inflation would have been 4.1% lower in 2022 (Unite, 2024). Likewise, supermarket profit margins increased 19% between 2019-2023 (Unite, 2024) whilst food inflation was over 19% in March 2023 (Reuters, 2024). The Competition and Markets Authority further evidenced the role of market concentration and higher markups during the inflation crisis. They found average markups had increased since 2008 from just over 20% to roughly 35%, with higher values for the top 10% of profitable firms (CMA, 2022). Research found that 90% of nominal profit increases in the UK during the inflationary period occurred in the top 11% of publicly traded firms (IPPR, 2023). Despite initially being one of the biggest propagators of the narrative that rising wages risked increasing inflation, the Bank of England was forced to acknowledge the outsized role of corporate profits in amplifying inflation. As a result, the BofE found companies that increased prices to protect their margins, thus hiking customer costs, contributed around 75% of inflation at the end of 2022 (BofE, 2024).

Eurozone

Corporate profiteering had similar effects on the Eurozone inflation rate. In 2022, the European Commission found unit profits steadily increased to a record of 9.3%. They highlight that this contributed more to inflation than unit labour costs, as ‘the profit share has risen above its pre-pandemic average, while the labour income share analogously fell’ (European Commission, 2023). The IMF’s research concluded that rising corporate profits contributed to half of the Eurozone inflation in 2021-2022 (Hansen; et al, 2023). They found ‘unit profit increases have been concentrated in sectors exposed to international commodity prices and demand-supply mismatches’ (Hansen; et al, 2023), most evident in agriculture, construction, mining, utilities and manufacturing. The researchers added, ‘the results show that firms have passed on more than the nominal cost shock and have fared relatively better than workers’ (Hansen; et al, 2023). This tallies with a French study (Arquiéa and Thiea, 2023) that analysed the pass-through costs of French manufacturing firms. It concluded that firms in less competitive sectors increased their prices more than warranted by actual changes in costs. In the least competitive sector, they found firms passed through 110% of the energy shock, implying an excess pass-through of 10%. A top official from the European Central Bank asserted during a speech: ‘some producers have been exploiting the uncertainty created by high and volatile inflation and supply-demand mismatches to increase their margins, raising prices beyond what was necessary to absorb cost increases’ (Panetta, 2023). In a statement in June 2023, Chrstine Lagarde—president of the European Central Bank—added, ‘…sectors have taken advantage to push costs through entirely without squeezing on margins, and for some of them to push prices higher than just the cost-push’ (Allenbach-Ammann 2023).

Multinational Corporations

Large multinational corporations, typically operating in concentrated markets, were the biggest beneficiaries of the post-pandemic inflationary period. Spikes in the global price of crude oil and natural gas due to the easing of lockdown restrictions in 2021, followed up Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, allowed fossil fuel companies to make windfall profits. Profit margins of oil companies increased from an average of 8.5% in 2019 to 16.5% by 2022. This was equivalent to £64 billion in profit in 2022 compared with theoretically maintained pre-pandemic margins (Unite, 2024). In the UK, the CMA also found evidence that, despite falling costs of crude oil in 2022, margins on fossil fuel products such as petrol remained at record highs highlighting a lack of competition in the fuel market as responsible (CMA, 2024). Given oil and gas are essential commodities, their higher costs were big amplifiers of trickle-down inflation, with the UN Secretary General going as far as stating fossil fuel companies ‘have the world by the throat’ (Guterres, 2022). Container shipping firms and global agribusiness, operating in oligopolistic markets, also saw record profits. As supply chains were recovering from Covid-19 lockdowns, container shipping companies were able to exploit the supply bottlenecks in ports. Some increased their profit margins by up 650-fold (Unite, 2024), with their profits contributing 1.55% to the global inflation rate in 2021 (IMF, 2024). Similarly, the four global giant agribusiness corporations that dominate crucial crops such as grains—ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus—saw profits shoot up 255%, making a combined $10.4bn in 2021 (Unite, 2023; Clapp and Howard, 2023).

A landmark study carried out by IPPR and Common Wealth (2023), focussing on companies listed on major stock exchanges for the US, Germany, UK, Brazil and South Africa, found ‘large firms, beyond just the commodities sector, are using their power to preserve their profit margins’ (Hayes, 2023). Their results showed ‘some stock market-listed firms not only protected their margins but also increased them, not only passing inflation on but further amplifying it’, with an average 30% rise in business profits recorded (IPPR, 2023). Whilst acknowledging the temporary monopoly power some firms found themselves possessing due to post-pandemic supply issues, they point to firms operating within concentrated markets as responsible for the majority of amplified cost pressures. Starkly, researchers found CEOs boasted about price gauging. Analysis of earnings calls found, ‘CEOs have admitted… that they have been taking advantage of inflation to raise profit margins by increasing prices beyond what is needed to offset any increase in their input costs’ (Ferguson and Storm, 2023). In her congressional testimony, Lindsay Owens, executive director at the Groundwork Collaborative, said analysis of hundreds of earnings calls showed the strategy of firms was, ‘pass along rising costs, and then take even more’ (2022). Additionally, price gouging was so ostentatious it drew the ire of chief economists of major financial institutions. Albert Edwards, chief strategist at Société Générale, wrote, ‘when are government [sic] going to halt this price gauging?’ (Fortune, 2024). Chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, Paul Donovan, also stated ‘much of the current inflation is driven by profit expansion’ (Burgon, 2023).

Taken together, there is considerable evidence and widespread agreement that corporations operating in concentrated markets across advanced economies, leveraged their market positions to exploit and profiteer during the inflation crisis. This exacerbated inflation rates substantially across advanced economies, both worsening and prolonging the crisis. Though critics argue firms did not ‘suddenly become greedy’ (Bourne, 2023), this misses the point. In many ways, price gauging during the inflationary crisis is not surprising, given the recent history of corporate actions. As already discussed, since the neoliberal pivot, there has been a steady rise in corporate profits through the reduction of wages and increasing markups to maximise shareholder value. Subsequently, the inflation crisis simply gave large companies the opportunity for sharp acceleration and intensification of these practices under the auspices of wider uncontrollable macroeconomic trends. In this sense, there was effectively nothing out of the ordinary with corporate pricing strategies during the crisis.

Discussion

Corporate State Capture

Despite overwhelming evidence of corporate profiteering’s outsized contribution to the inflation crisis, there was a general lack of public discourse and government action. One explanation for this is the confluence of vested interests and influence of right-wing, corporate funded think tanks, lobby groups and media outlets, who shaped the narrative on inflation and deflected analysis away from corporate profiteering.

Among the most prolific deflectors of corporate profiteering and seller’s inflation in the US were the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute. These influential think tanks promoted arguments against windfall taxes and regulatory measures on corporations, whilst blaming the primary drivers of inflation on tight labour markets, wage growth and government overspending (Kamin, 2023; Taylor and Doren, 2006; Ditch and Stern, 2023). In the UK, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Adam Smith Institute, frequently framed inflation as a consequence of government stimulus during the pandemic and ‘overregulation’, rather than market abuse by corporations (Redwood, 2023; ASI, 2023). In Europe, the powerful lobby group Business Europe maintained their assertion of the dangers of a wage-price spiral, even after the IMF and ECB—two of its closest collaborators—acknowledged the outsized role of corporate profits and lack of evidence of wage pressures on inflation (Corporate Europe Observatory, 2023). Over time, their condemnation of sellers’ inflation oscillated from ridicule, to dismissal, to acknowledgement, all the while maintaining that high corporate profits reflected a healthy economy (Raj, 2024; Sindreu, 2023).

Think tanks such as these possess considerable influence over public discourse and policy due to their close connections with major political parties and corporate-owned media. Narratives deflecting criticism of corporate profiteering were easily platformed given the concentration of corporate-owned media outlets. For instance, six conglomerates own 90% of American media (Rao-Poolla, 2021) and in the UK only three companies own 90% of print media (Majid, 2023). The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, ran several op-eds that steered the narrative away from corporate profits. Despite studies highlighting the relationship between profiteering and inflation, the Post repeatedly tried to undermine this narrative, and openly criticised Biden’s plan to increase corporation tax. In a congressional hearing surrounding the role of profiteering and inflation, these op-eds were used by the US Chamber of Commerce, America’s top business lobby, as evidence that the premise of the hearing was roundly refuted by economists (Perez et al, 2023). With corporate voices so easily platformed, independent economists and activists highlighting corporate profiteering were overshadowed and marginalised meaning seller’s inflation did not gain sufficient mainstream traction, and corporate profiteering could continue apace.

Right-wing think tanks have close ties with senior members of mainstream political parties, providing them with ready-made policy recommendations promoting pro-market agendas (Baio, 2024; Lawrence, et al, 2019). Despite think-tank funding coming from vested corporate interests (effectively making them de facto lobby groups), or in some cases without revealing funding sources at all (Bychawski, 2022), they ostensibly present themselves as neutral institutions offering objective economic analysis in public discourse. They achieve this in part through the insistence that neoclassical economics, which gives neoliberalism much of its intellectual legitimacy, represents a science rather than ideology (Josephidas et al, 2013). It is this veneer of independence and intellectual impartiality that affords license to politicians to advocate for the implementation of further neoliberal policy proposals. As Mirowski noted, ‘crisis becomes an opportunity not to question markets, but to reassert that markets have not been sufficiently unleashed… the remedy, therefore, is always more market, never less’ (2013: p. 64). Think tanks effectively aided the obfuscation of the main drivers of inflation in public discourse, whilst taking the opportunity to push the neoliberal ideology condemning government intervention and labour’s wage demands.

The ‘revolving door’ between public and private spheres is instructive when analysing the lack of scrutiny towards corporate profiteering. Across advanced economies, the practice of public sector legislators or regulators taking up private sector positions—either as employees, or lobbyists of industries affected by state legislation and regulations—understandably exacerbates potential conflicts of interests. Nevertheless, there has been limited legislative pushback, leading to accusations of regulatory capture by corporations (Luechinger and Moser, 2023). As Mirowski laments, ‘the revolving door between the U.S. Treasury and Goldman Sachs was evidence that the market system worked, and not of ingrained corruption and conflicts of interest’ (2013, p. 65). Officials in legislative or regulatory positions often have close ties with corporate lobbyists, have held positions as corporate executives or lobbyists themselves, or may not wish to jeopardise future lucrative careers in the private sector by passing unfriendly policies on corporations (Innes, 2021). Notably, during the crisis—and despite record fossil fuel industry profits—UK ministers met with oil lobbyists every day in 2023 (Global Witness, 2024). In 2024, the Composite Index of Corporate Dominance (CICD) registered American corporate dominance in public life at 73.5 out of 100—‘a level that places the United States closer to oligarchy than to functional democracy’ (Suhy, 2024). It is therefore explicable that regulators and policymakers’ reticent attitudes towards corporate profiteering during the crisis, alongside lack of stricter policies such as price controls or broad excess profit taxes, was at least partially due to outsized corporate influence permeating governmental decision-making. Aided by long-standing neoliberal attitudes that legislators should ‘get out the way’ and not interfere in markets, the build-up of corporate influence throughout governments meant these companies did not have to fear significant scrutiny from policymakers, as they were effectively unaccountable to the state. In this sense, the inflation crisis could be a glaring example of corporate state capture at work, which has constructed the ideal environment for crisis profiteering to go unchallenged.

Encouragingly, there were instances where governments openly attributed corporate profiteering and market concentration to the inflation crisis. In 2023, the French government intervened in the food manufacturing industry as input costs were falling. Their pressure meant 75 food manufacturing companies agreed to lower prices between 2% and 10% or face sanctions (Butler, 2023). However, many of these firms sought to circumvent these price controls by engaging in ‘shrinkflation’, whereby they reduced the size of their products but maintained their original pricing. This prompted the French government to enforce further transparency rules whereby firms had to inform customers of quantity decreases (Adamson, 2024). The Spanish government’s active use of price controls and unconventional fiscal policies to tackle inflation head-on has been argued to be a template of progressive economic policy (NEB, 2024). Excess profit taxes were levied on big banks, energy and electricity firms, whilst temporarily removing VAT on essentials such as eggs, pasta, vegetables and fruit. The wholesale price of gas was capped by subsidising producers to keep the prices of electricity down for consumers. Caps on rent rises and transport subsidies were also brought in to allay the economic burden on its citizens (NEB, 2024). These measures have been attributed to Spain’s relatively quicker inflation rate decline (Labour Research Department, 2023).

The Biden administration can be credited with the most rigorous anti-trust legislation and enforcement in decades. Biden ran a significant part of his 2024 presidential bid on tackling outsized market power and price gouging during the inflation crisis:

to any corporation that has not brought their prices back down—even as inflation has come down, even [as] supply chains have been rebuilt—it’s time to stop the price gouging. (2023)

The new enforcement successfully blocked the proposed merger between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, arguing it would reduce competition and lead to higher prices (Graham, 2024). In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Amazon, whose profits increased year on year throughout the pandemic and inflation crisis (Jones, 2023). The FTC alleged Amazon had engaged in monopolistic practices and deceptive business conduct. Despite Biden’s promising rhetoric and initiatives to revive antitrust enforcement, these measures proved to be too little, too late. However, despite attempts to impose windfall taxes on energy companies, this was met with strong opposition from lobbyists and legislators alike and failed to become law. Instead, the Biden administration released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to reduce oil prices (Harris and Wolfram, 2022)

Cost-of-Living Crisis

Record high inflation rates precipitated an unprecedented fall in living standards in advanced economies, colloquially referred to as the cost-of-living crisis. Millions of people were forced into financial precarity and material deprivation due to the erosion of purchasing power, as the rise in consumer prices outstripped wage increases. After years of stagnating incomes, by 2021, most workers in advanced economies lived pay check to pay check, with little disposable or saved income left over, even in case of emergencies (Bank of America, 2024; Race, 2024; Hill, 2018). Between late 2021 and early 2024, consumer prices on average increased by 22.8% in the UK, 20.9% in Germany, 18.8% in the US and 16.6% in France (Litsardopoulos, 2024). However, it was the cost of necessities such as food, housing and energy that saw some of the biggest price hikes. Resultantly, inflation impacted poorer households the most, as spending on necessities takes up a higher proportion of their income. Correspondingly, there was a significant rise in credit card use to bridge the gap between loss of purchasing power and ability to pay for essentials, pushing many families into negative wealth (Inman, 2022). Furthermore, poorer citizens were unevenly impacted by higher price rises for the cheapest groceries and staples such as bread and milk. As Tao Chen, an IFS research scholar, reported, ‘widespread ‘cheapflation’ pushed up the prices of the most inexpensive varieties of grocery products … this hit poorer households harder’ (Chen, et al, 2024). The IFS found the least well-off paid 29.1% more for their food, compared with 23.5% for better-off households. Stories of choosing between meals or heating homes became typical during the crisis, with a major rise in food bank use and homelessness also observed throughout advanced economies (HUD, 2024; Trussell Trust, 2024; Left.EU, 2022). Resultantly, rates of poverty, particularly child poverty, spiked because of inflationary pressures (United Way NCA, 2024; Carraro et al, 2023; Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2024).

In the UK, research by the thinktank NIESR found that living standards in 2024 were 20% lower for the poorest 50% of households then 2019-2020. For families in the bottom 10% of wealth distribution this equated to a loss of £4500 a year (NIESR, 2024). A poll conducted by Ipsos in 2022 found one in four people in advanced economies were struggling financially due to the cost-of-living crisis (WEF, 2022). Polling in 22 countries of more than 21000 citizens found 49% of respondents listed the cost of living and inflation as one of their top three challenges facing their family and community. In Western Europe, 33% agreed to some extent with the statement, ‘I often worry about whether my family will go hungry’ (Malloch-Brown, 2022). As the crisis persisted these trends increased, with 93% of respondents in the European Union ‘seriously worried about how they will cope’ (EURES, 2025); similarly in the US, 50% of respondents said the cost-of-living was the top concern facing the country (Ipsos, 2024).

Despite the unprecedented decline in living standards and erosion of real wages, governments and central banks in advanced economies continued to suppress calls for wage increases. As Hu Phil, the Bank of England’s chief economist, infamously put, ‘workers need to accept they are poorer’ and stop seeking pay increases (Wearden, 2023). This was because the BofE feared a wage-price spiral similar to the 1970s (Giles et al, 2023). However, nominal wage increases secured during the crisis did not offset the impact inflation had on real salaries across advanced economies (Gitzel, 2023; Reuters, 2023; Shapiro, 2023) and are yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels in many countries (NIESR, 2024; Adrjan et al, 2025). The sluggish rebound in real wages is testament to the successful defanging of unions carried out through neoliberal policies. With curbs to union power and decline in union membership since the neoliberal pivot, especially the UK and US, the emphasis many economists placed on the risk of a wage-price spiral is peculiar. Given general price rises occur when firms decide to increase them, there is a much clearer relationship between firms and inflation than there is between workers recouping their losses and inflation. Despite this, the default reaction is to expect workers to take financial losses, rather than asking firms to sacrifice profits (Downey, 2022). By vilifying unions and workers’ pay demands, it reinforces the narrative that such forces ultimately interfere with the markets’ ability to self-correct efficiently, and thus inherently will cause further economic woes. This logic ultimately resists calls for scrutinising any potential role for market failure, instead shifting the weight of blame and policy action against labour.

Monetary policy put further pressure on workers’ and small businesses’ financial situations during the crisis. As interest rates increased to historic highs, the cost of servicing debt, such as credit cards, loans and mortgages, became more expensive.However, in its report on profiteering, Unite drew attention to the windfall profits made by the banking sector due to higher interest rates. Banks were quick to raise interest rates on debtors, however, they were not as forthcoming in applying higher interest rates to savers’ deposits, thus increasing their net interest income. In 2023 alone, the Big Four UK banks—Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and NatWest—made a combined pre-tax profit of £45billion, up 75% from 2018/19, with margins 50% higher than pre-pandemic averages (Unite, 2024). Given monetary policy’s profound redistributive implications, it is implausible to consider this as a politically neutral lever at the disposal of central banks (Roos, 2022). On the contrary, its far-reaching benefits to creditors, wealthy savers and big business comes at the expense of debtors, poorer households and small businesses. Resultantly, some argue this amounts to a prescient form of class war (Meadway, 2022; Hung and Thompson, 2016): standard monetary policy is a means to shift the burden of readjusting the economy onto the shoulders of those in society least able to afford it, whilst ensuring private wealth remains protected, or even enhanced.

Many governments intervened to offer relative support to their citizens, enacting policies such as price caps, windfall taxes and other subsidies. Between 2021-2023, €651billion was allocated and earmarked across European countries, including the UK, to shield consumers from rising energy costs (Sgaravatti et al, 2023). Countries in Europe, including the UK, imposed windfall taxes on the profits of major energy companies with the aim of redistributing the money to pay for these fiscal policies. However, these windfall taxes only covered a fraction of the costs, and notably did not even occur in the US. They also saw major pushback from fossil fuel lobbyists to delay or dilute the legislation, limiting their scope to the extent they felt symbolic rather than effective (Genovese, 2023). For instance, the windfall tax enacted by the British government in 2022, called the energy profits levy, had several loopholes. Fossil fuel companies were able to deduct 91% of their capital investment costs from their corporation tax bill. As a direct result of the tax relief embedded in the levy, fossil fuel companies will reive an estimated £18.1billion, an increase of £10.5billion, between 2023-2026 (Chapman, 2023). Most of the fiscal support—variable between advanced economies—came from government borrowing, which was ultimately borne by taxpayers. Governments thus had to balance between immediate support for their citizens with long-term implications of increased debt levels, particularly given the higher cost of borrowing (OECD, 2023). In the past, excessive government debt has led to austerity and declines in public service provisions. By 2025, a return to austerity has been debated across the EU and UK (Studničná 2024; Guardian, 2025).

Wealth Transfer

In many regards, the cost-of-living crisis draws parallels with the 2008 global financial crisis. Cataclysmic market failure in the banking sector led to government bailouts to support ailing financial institutions. The banks were saved, with top executives still receiving their bonuses (Dash and Story, 2009), whilst the ongoing recession caused a severe drop in living standards and fall in wages for millions of workers. The bailouts increased public debt and government deficits, in turn justifying austerity across advanced economies as a necessary step to ‘rebalance the books’ (Cameron, 2010). In comparison, the cost-of-living crisis, significantly exacerbated by corporate profiteering, instigated a major economic crisis. Materially, millions of people faced significant falls in living standards and reduction in wages. Like the 2008 bailouts, governments used taxpayer money to shield citizens from the worst effects of inflation, effectively subsidising corporate profits and placing further strain on public finances. In both cases, despite glaring market failures, neoliberal doctrine was reinforced, and the private sector faced little scrutiny for its role in facilitating the crises. Instead, ire was directed at workers’ attempts to protect their real wages, and in the case of 2008, aimed at benefit claimants (Milne, 2014). Such events have faced criticisms for representing a broken social contract, and a system that privatises gains, but socialises losses (Hathaway, 2020).

Corporate profiteering during the inflation crisis helped exacerbate and deepen economic inequality in advanced economies. The higher prices paid by ordinary consumers due to corporate exploitation of the crisis was converted into record profits, increasing the wealth for society’s richest. A report on inequality by Oxfam (2024) found that, for every $100 generated by 96 major multinational corporations in 2022/2023, $82 was returned to shareholders in the form of dividends or stock buybacks (Oxfam, 2024). In 2023, global corporate dividends hit a record high of $1.66 trillion, with fossil fuel companies and major banks distributing some of the biggest payouts (Raitano, 2024). In the UK, Unite (2024) showed FTSE 100 stock buybacks and dividends were up 21% between 2022-2023 compared to pre-pandemic averages. Over the course of 2022-2023, the total value of shareholder payouts in the UK was £275 billion—almost £10000 per UK household (Unite, 2024). Shareholder payout disproportionately benefits the wealthy, as share ownership is highly concentrated amongst this demographic (Oxfam, 2024). For example, in the US, the top 10% of income earners own 90% of all publicly traded stock owned by US individuals, with the highest 1% owning over half (Collins, 2024). In some instances, when corporations declined to pass all the inflationary costs onto customers, and not seek to maximise profits during the crisis, they faced revolts from investors who did not want the crisis to go to waste. When Target and Walmart tried this, their shares temporarily plummeted and were only restored after adjusting their pricing strategies to suit the interests of shareholders (Repko, 2021). Incidents like this contribute to the critique that notions of stakeholder capitalism are hollow in practice (Ramaswamy, 2021) and Freidman’s doctrine of maximising shareholder value is still the reigning modus operandi.

The opportunism evident in the exploitation of the crisis by corporations and shareholders, and lack of scrutiny and pushback from governments, is a naked display of corporate power in contemporary political economy. The zero-sum relationship between raising prices to the detriment of labour—which endured a dramatic fall in living standards—whilst working to the financial benefit of shareholders is a clear indication of this. Therefore, the post-pandemic inflation crisis may be more aptly considered as one of the most momentous, and ostentatious wealth transfers from labour to capital in modern history.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the post-pandemic inflation crisis was a forceful demonstration of the power enjoyed by corporations in ‘actually existing’ neoliberal political economy. Forty years of neoliberal policies concentrated markets in advanced economies, allowing large firms to exercise oligopolistic pricing powers. Powerful corporations strategically leveraged the initial inflationary shocks to the global economy—primarily the pandemic, closely followed by the Ukraine war—by utilising their market power to exploit the situation. Using the initial inflationary surge as a smokescreen, corporations raised prices beyond increased costs to enhance profit margins, without fearing a drop-off in demand due to tacit collusion between firms. By compiling empirical data from a wide variety of studies, this dissertation demonstrates how this phenomenon occurred throughout advanced economies and was responsible for a significant proportion of overall inflation rates. Analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data highlighted that the majority of nominal profit increases occurred in large corporations operating in concentrated markets. These findings are in keeping with the theory of seller’s inflation (Weber and Wasner, 2022) and offer a considerable contribution to its validity and legitimacy as an economic phenomenon. With further inflationary shocks to the global economy likely, it is imperative that seller’s inflation is appropriately acknowledged to allow implementation of more suitable counter-inflationary policies. However, one limitation of this study is that it does not investigate the impact on developing nations. Given they are often at the mercy of macroeconomic trends, particularly interest rates in advanced economies, such as the ‘Lost Decade’ in the 1980s, further research could explore the impacts of the inflation crisis and corporate profiteering on economic development.

The crisis showcased the power wielded by corporations in controlling and obfuscating economic discourse, deflecting criticism away from market fundamentalism and onto labour. Furthermore, the concurrent lack of appropriate scrutiny towards corporate profiteering by governments is emblematic of policymaker’s reflexive laissez-faire, ‘hands off’ approach to markets, effectively leaving the economic sphere unaccountable to democratic governance, even in the face of glaring market failure. Instead of exerting pressure on corporations,government policies burdened citizens through the suppression of higher wage demands, raising interest rates and effectively using public finances to subsidise corporate profiteering. These actions lend themselves to criticisms of neoliberal governance suffering from corporate state capture, as the inflation crisis exemplified a system that privatises gains but socialises losses.

Corporations’ strategic pricing created record profits, which considerably boosted shareholder value, whilst exacerbating financial pressures for ordinary people. The result was an immense and historic wealth transfer from labour to capital. However, corporate profiteering during the crisis and the widening economic inequality it engendered was not an anomaly. It may be more aptly considered as an intensified and accelerated perpetuation of the same trends that persisted previously under neoliberal capitalism.

Bibliography

Adam Smith Institute. (2023). [online] Adam Smith Institute. Available at: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/so-thats-greedflation-dealt-with-then-nonsense [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Adamson, T. (2024). France asks retailers to alert customers to cases of ‘shrinkflation’. [online] AP News. Available at: https://apnews.com/article/shrinkflation-france-retailers-cdf84bc2156a592679b0ed7962cea51b?utm_source=chatgpt.com [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Allenbach-Ammann, J. (2023). ECB-Lagarde says corporate profits contributed to inflation. [online] www.euractiv.com. Available at: https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/ecb-lagarde-says-corporate-profits-contributed-to-inflation/ [Accessed 9 May 2024].

Alvarez, J., Sollaci, A., Bluedorn, J., Hansen, N.-J., Huang, Y. and Pugacheva, E. (2023). International Monetary Fund. Wage-Price Spirals: What is the Historical Evidence? RESERVE BANK OF AUSTRALIA RESEARCH CONFERENCE SEPTEMBER 25, 2023. Available at: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/confs/2023/pdf/rba-conference-2023-alvarez-bluedorn-hansen-huang-pugacheva-sollaci-presentation.pdf.

American Enterprise Institute – AEI. (2023). Advice for the Fed: Inflation and Jobs Picture Is Too Unclear to Hike Rates Now. [online] Available at: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/advice-for-the-fed-inflation-and-jobs-picture-is-too-unclear-to-hike-rates-now/ [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Americanbar.org. (2021). Biden administration steps up antitrust enforcement. [online] Available at: https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2021/11/antitrust-enforcement/.

Arce, Ó., Hahn, E. and Koester, G. (2023). How tit-for-tat inflation can make everyone poorer. www.ecb.europa.eu. [online] Available at: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2023/html/ecb.blog.230330~00e522ecb5.en.html.

Arquie, A. and Thiel, M. (2019). WP_ArquieThie230623.pdf. [online] Google Docs. Available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14Jb9mYOipBc0jpZa0v5096KNfWQQgSZ9/view?pli=1 [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Baio, A. (2024). The right-wing organization in Trump’s ear replacing the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. [online] The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-america-first-policy-institute-project-2025-b2644777.html.

Bajgar, M., G. Berlingieri, S. Calligaris, C. Criscuolo, and J. Timmis. 2019. “Industry Concentration in Europe and North America.” OECD Productivity Working Papers, no. 18, January 2019. OECD Publishing, Paris.

Ball, L., Leigh, D. and Mishra, P. (2022). Understanding US inflation during the COVID era. [online] Brookings. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/understanding-u-s-inflation-during-the-covid-era/.

Bank of England (2024). Monetary Policy Report. [online] Available at: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/monetary-policy-report/2024/november/monetary-policy-report-november-2024.pdf.

Bivens, J. (2022). Corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation. How should policymakers respond? [online] Economic Policy Institute. Available at: https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond/.

Bivens, J. (2024). Profits and price inflation are indeed linked. [online] Economic Policy Institute. Available at: https://www.epi.org/blog/profits-and-price-inflation-are-indeed-linked/.

Bivens, J., Banerjee, A. and Dzholos, M. (2022). Rising inflation is a global problem: U.S. policy choices are not to blame. [online] Economic Policy Institute. Available at: https://www.epi.org/blog/rising-inflation-is-a-global-problem-u-s-policy-choices-are-not-to-blame/.

Blinder, A. and Rudd, J. (2010). The Supply-Shock Explanation of the Great Stagflation Revisited*. [online] Available at: https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c9160/revisions/c9160.rev2.pdf.

Blommestein, H.J. and Gok, A. (2009). OECD sovereign borrowing outlook 2009. OECD Journal: Financial Market Trends, 2009(1), pp.187–195. https://doi.org/10.1787/fmt-v2009-art8-en.

Boesler, M. (2022). 2021 Was Best Year for U.S. Corporation Profits Since 1950. [online] Bloomberg.com. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-30/2021-was-best-year-for-u-s-corporation-profits-since-1950?embedded-checkout=true [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Bourne, R. (2023). ‘Greedy’ Firms Aren’t to Blame for Inflation, Whatever the IMF May Say. Cato Institute. Available at: https://www.cato.org/commentary/greedy-firms-arent-blame-inflation-whatever-imf-may-saythis [Accessed 11 Mar. 2025].

Brainard, L. (2023). Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Speech by Vice Chair Brainard on the economic outlook. [online] Available at: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard20230119a.htm.

Bräuning, F., Fillat, J., and Joaquim, G. (2022). Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. [online] Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Available at: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/current-policy-perspectives/2022/cost-price-relationships-in-a-concentrated-economy.aspx [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Bruff, I. (2024). Detaching ‘neoliberalism’ from ‘free markets’: monopolistic corporations as neoliberalism’s ideal market form. Review of Social Economy, pp.1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/00346764.2024.2361156.

Burgon, R. (2023). Inflation Is Being Driven By Corporate Price Gouging. [online] Available at: https://jacobin.com/2023/05/uk-greedflation-corporate-profiteering-policy-proposals.

Butler, S. (2023). France’s food industry pledges to cut prices after government pressure. The Guardian. [online] 9 Jun. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/09/frances-food-industry-pledges-to-cut-prices-government-pressure.

Bychawski, A. (2022). US climate deniers gave millions to Tory-linked think tanks. [online] openDemocracy. Available at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/think-tanks-adam-smith-policy-exchange-legatum-iea-taxpayers-alliance-climate-denial/.

Cairó, I. and Sim, J. (2020). Market Power, Inequality, and Financial Instability. Finance and Economics Discussion Series, 2020(057). doi:https://doi.org/10.17016/feds.2020.057.

Cameron, D. (2010). Prime Minister’s Speech on the Economy. [online] GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-speech-on-the-economy.

Caraballo, J., (2018) “Does the Monetarist Theory of Inflation Fit the Data? Time to Replace a ‘Paradigm’”, American Review of Political Economy 12(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.38024/arpe.149

Cato Institute. (2006). Windfall Profits Tax Would Hardly Be Revenue Gusher. [online] Available at: https://www.cato.org/commentary/windfall-profits-tax-would-hardly-be-revenue-gusher?utm_source=chatgpt.com [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Chapman, A. (2023). The windfall tax was supposed to rein in fossil fuel profits. Instead it has saved corporations billions. [online] New Economics Foundation. Available at: https://neweconomics.org/2023/11/the-windfall-tax-was-supposed-to-rein-in-fossil-fuel-profits-instead-it-has-saved-corporations-billions.

Chetty, R. (2013). Opinion | Yes, Economics Is a Science. The New York Times. [online] 20 Oct. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/opinion/yes-economics-is-a-science.html.

Clapp, J. (2023). The Hunger Profiteers | by Jennifer Clapp & Phil Howard – Project Syndicate. [online] Project Syndicate. Available at: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/agribusiness-market-concentration-food-insecurity-profiteering-by-jennifer-clapp-and-phil-howard-2023-08.

Cochrane, J.H. (2021). The fiscal roots of inflation. Review of Economic Dynamics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2021.06.002.

Collins, C. (2024). Inequality.org. The Richest 1 Percent Now Own a Greater Share of the Stock Market Than Ever Before. [online] Available at: https://inequality.org/article/stock-ownership-concentration/.

Corporateeurope.org. (2023). Business lobby ignores greedflation, promotes wage suppression | Corporate Europe Observatory. [online] Available at: https://corporateeurope.org/en/2023/12/business-lobby-ignores-greedflation-promotes-wage-suppression [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (4th ed.). Sage Publications.

Crouch, C. (2011) The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism, Malden, MA, Polity Press.

Crouch, C. (2014). Neoliberalism’s Heart Of Darkness – Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste. How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown (London/New York, Verso, 2013). European Journal of Sociology, 55(3), 419–422. doi:10.1017/S0003975614000228.

Daniel, W. (2024). The analyst who said greedflation was killing capitalism is rolling his eyes about AI: ‘Every bubble has a compelling narrative’. [online] Fortune. Available at: https://fortune.com/2024/03/29/is-ai-bubble-albert-edwards-analyst-capitalism-greedflation/ [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

De Loecker, J., Eeckhout, J. and Unger, G. (2020). The Rise of Market Power and the Macroeconomic Implications. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 135(2), pp.561–644. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjz041.

Ditch, D. (2019). The Road to Inflation: How an Unprecedented Federal Spending Spree Created Economic Turmoil. [online] The Heritage Foundation. Available at: https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/report/the-road-inflation-how-unprecedented-federal-spending-spree-created?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Downey, L. (2022). The Fight Against Inflation Is Becoming a Class War. [online] Foreign Policy. Available at: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/16/the-fight-against-inflation-is-becoming-a-class-war/ [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Dunne, M. (2024). Americans increasingly concerned about inflation as U.S. election nears. [online] Ipsos. Available at: https://www.ipsos.com/en/americans-increasingly-concerned-about-inflation-us-election-nears.

Edwards, A. (2023). Public Insight. [online] Available at: https://insight-public.sgmarkets.com/alternative-view/is-capitalism-dead [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Ennis, S.F. and Pike, C. (2017). Inequality: A Hidden Cost of Market Power. SSRN Electronic Journal. [online] https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2942791.

EURES (EURopean Employment Services). (2025). The cost of living in the EU. [online] Available at: https://eures.europa.eu/cost-living-eu-2025-02-20_en [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

European Commission. (2023). RESEARCH AND INNOVATION – European Economic Forecast—Spring 2023. [online] Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/rtd/items/795360/en [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Ferguson, T. and Storm, S. (2023). Myth and Reality in the Great Inflation Debate: Supply Shocks and Wealth Effects in a Multipolar World Economy. International Journal of Political Economy, 52(1), pp.1–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.2023.2191421.

Financial Times. (2022). Bank of England governor admits UK economy suffering from wage-price spiral. [online] Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/f7f4481c-f9d4-4c02-9634-1ac7441faa50.

Fitchratings. (2024). Available at: https://www.fitchratings.com/research/sovereigns/jump-in-shipping-costs-intensifies-last-mile-inflation-challenges-26-02-2024.

Friedman, M. (1960) A Program for Monetary Stability. Fordham University Press, New York.

Friedman, M. (1962). Capitalism and freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Friedman, M. (1970). The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits. The New York Times. [online] 13 Sep. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html.

Genovese, V. (2023). Windfall taxes on European energy firms ‘weakened’ by lobbying: NGOs. [online] Available at: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/10/30/windfall-taxes-on-european-energy-companies-weakened-by-intense-lobbying-says-new-study? [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Gitzel, T. (2025). VP Bank | Research. [online] Available at: https://www.vpbank.com/research/en/content/45671/fear-of-a-wage-price-spiral-are-unfounded [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Global Witness. (2024). UK government met with oil lobbyists every day last year. [online] Available at: https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/fossil-fuels/uk-government-met-oil-lobbyists-every-day-last-year/.

Glover, A., Von Ende-Becker, A., Mustre-del-Rio, J. (2023). How Much Have Record Corporate Profits Contributed to Recent Inflation? [online] Available at: https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/economic-review/how-much-have-record-corporate-profits-contributed-to-recent-inflation/.

Gov.uk. (2022). CMA publishes second state of competition report. [online] GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-publishes-second-state-of-competition-report [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

GOV.UK. (2024). High fuel margins ‘concerning’ CMA finds. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/high-fuel-margins-concerning-cma-finds.

Graham, V. (2023). FTC Sues Amazon for Illegally Maintaining Monopoly power. [online] Federal Trade Commission. Available at: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/ftc-sues-amazon-illegally-maintaining-monopoly-power.

Graham, V. (2024). FTC Challenges Kroger’s Acquisition of Albertsons. [online] Federal Trade Commission. Available at: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/02/ftc-challenges-krogers-acquisition-albertsons.

Gros, D. and Galeone, P. (2023). Inflation has affected the UK, US and Europe differently—here’s what this means for interest rates. [online] The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/inflation-has-affected-the-uk-us-and-europe-differently-heres-what-this-means-for-interest-rates-218561.

Guterres, A [cited in]. Harvey, F. (2022). Fossil fuel firms ‘have humanity by the throat’, says UN head in blistering attack. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/17/fossil-fuel-firms-un-head-antonio-guterres-blistering-attack.

Gyauch-Lewis, D. (2023). The Inane Indignation Around Sellers’ Inflation – The Sling. [online] The Sling. Available at: https://www.thesling.org/the-inane-indignation-around-sellers-inflation/ [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Hansen, N.-J., Toscani, F. and Zhou, J. (2023). Europe’s Inflation Outlook Depends on How Corporate Profits Absorb Wage Gains. [online] IMF. Available at: https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/06/26/europes-inflation-outlook-depends-on-how-corporate-profits-absorb-wage-gains.

Hansen, N.-J., Toscani, F. and Zhou, J. (2023). Europe’s Inflation Outlook Depends on How Corporate Profits Absorb Wage Gains. [online] IMF. Available at: https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/06/26/europes-inflation-outlook-depends-on-how-corporate-profits-absorb-wage-gains.

Hardin, C. (2012). Finding the ‘Neo’ in Neoliberalism. Cultural Studies, [online] 28(2), pp.199–221. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2012.748815.

Harris, B and Wolfram, C. (2022). U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Price Impact of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Release. [online] Available at: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0887.

Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. academic.oup.com. Oxford University Press.

Hathaway, T. (2020). Neoliberalism as corporate power. Competition & Change, [online] 24(3-4), pp.315–337. https://doi.org/10.1177/1024529420910382.

Hayek, F. A. v. (1944). The Road to Serfdom. University of Chicago Press.

Hayes, C and Jung, C. (2023). IPPR and Commonwealth. Inflation, profits and market power: Towards a new research and policy agenda. [online] Available at: https://www.ippr.org/articles/inflation-profits-and-market-power.

Hill, A. (2018). Seven in 10 UK workers are ‘chronically broke’, study finds. The Guardian. [online] 25 Jan. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/jan/25/uk-workers-chronically-broke-study-economic-insecurity.

Horn, R.V. (2015). 6. Reinventing Monopoly and the Role of Corporations: The Roots of Chicago Law and Economics. [online] Philpapers.org. Available at: https://philpapers.org/rec/VANRMA-3.

Hung, H., & Thompson, D. (2016). Money Supply, Class Power, and Inflation: Monetarism Reassessed. American Sociological Review, 81(3), 447-466. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122416639609

Huston, J.H. and Spencer, R.W. (2017). Quantitative easing and asset bubbles. Applied Economics Letters, 25(6), pp.369–374. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2017.1324604.

Icaew. (2023). Executive pay rises amid cost-of-living crisis. [online] Available at: https://www.icaew.com/insights/viewpoints-on-the-news/2023/aug-2023/executive-pay-rises-amid-costofliving-crisis.

IMF (2023). World Economic Outlook, October 2023: Navigating Global Divergences. [online] IMF. Available at: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2023/10/10/world-economic-outlook-october-2023.

IMF. (2024). How Inflation Radically Changes Economic Ideas by John Cochrane. [online] Available at: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-How-inflation-radically-changes-economic-ideas-John-Cochrane.https://larrysummers.com/2021/05/24/the-inflation-risk-is-real/

Inman, P. (2022). UK credit card borrowing surges amid cost of living crisis. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/mar/29/uk-credit-card-cost-of-living-crisis-inflation.

Innes, A. (2021). Corporate state capture: the degree to which the British state is porous to business interests is exceptional among established democracies. [online] British Politics and Policy at LSE. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/corporate-state-capture/.

Institute for Fiscal Studies. (2024). Cheapflation and the rise of inflation inequality | Institute for Fiscal Studies. [online] Available at: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/cheapflation-and-rise-inflation-inequality.

Jessop, J. (2023). Blaming inflation on corporate greed is dangerous Left-wing nonsense. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/29/inflation-corporate-greed-dangerous-left-wing/? [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Jones, C. (2023). Amazon profits nearly triple as company reports $143.1bn in revenue. The Guardian. [online] 26 Oct. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/26/amazon-quarter-profits-revenue-increase.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2024). UK Poverty 2024: the Essential Guide to Understanding Poverty in the UK | Joseph Rowntree Foundation. [online] www.jrf.org.uk. Available at: https://www.jrf.org.uk/uk-poverty-2024-the-essential-guide-to-understanding-poverty-in-the-uk.

Jung, C. and Hayes, C. (2023). INFLATION, PROFITS AND MARKET POWER TOWARDS A NEW RESEARCH AND POLICY AGENDA. [online] Available at: https://ippr-org.files.svdcdn.com/production/Downloads/1701878131_inflation-profits-and-market-power-dec-23.pdf?dm=1703078253 [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Keynes, J.M. (1936). The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. [online] Available at: https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/125515/1366_keynestheoryofemployment.pdf.

Khan, L. and Vaheesan, S. (2016). Market Power and Inequality: The Antitrust Counterrevolution and its Discontents. [online] papers.ssrn.com. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2769132.

Konczal, M. and Lusiani, N. (2022). Prices, Profits, and Power: An Analysis of 2021 Firm-Level Markups. [online] Available at: https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/RI_PricesProfitsPower_202206.pdf.

Kotz, D.M. (2002). Globalization and Neoliberalism. Rethinking Marxism, [online] 14(2), pp.64–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/089356902101242189.

Krippendorff, K. (2019). History. In History (Fourth Edition ed., pp. 10-23). SAGE Publications, Inc.. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071878781

Labour Research Department. (2023). Inflation: why excess profits and high interest rates are to blame. [online] Available at: https://www.lrd.org.uk/free-read/inflation-why-excess-profits-and-high-interest-rates-are-blame [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Lawrence, F., Evans, R., Pegg, D., Barr, C. and Duncan, P. (2019). How the Right’s Radical Thinktanks Reshaped the Conservative Party. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/29/rightwing-thinktank-conservative-boris-johnson-brexit-atlas-network.

Left. Eu. (2022). COST OF LIVING CRISIS An explainer Background. Available at: https://left.eu/app/uploads/2022/12/explainer_CostOfLiving.pdf.

Litsardopoulos, N. (2025). The sour taste of inflation: The impact of inflation on UK wages | Institute for Employment Studies (IES). [online] The sour taste of inflation: The impact of inflation on UK wages | Institute for Employment Studies (IES). Available at: https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/news/sour-taste-inflation-impact-inflation-uk-wages.

Luechinger, S. and Moser, C. (2023). The Revolving Door Phenomenon. Studies in public choice, pp.167–182. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44393-0_8.

Lydon, R. (2025). Wage Growth Heading Into 2025: A Gradual Slowdown in the Euro Area – Indeed Hiring Lab UK I Ireland. [online] Indeed Hiring Lab UK I Ireland. Available at: https://www.hiringlab.org/uk/blog/2025/01/28/euro-area-wage-growth-heading-into-2025/ [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Majid, A. (2023). Who owns the news? Mail titles, News UK and Reach dominate, report finds. [online] Press Gazette. Available at: https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/media_metrics/who-owns-the-news-uk-news-media-owbership-analysed/.

Marglin, S., and J. Schor. 1990. The Golden Age of Capitalism Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience. Oxford: Clarendon Press

Marx, K. (1867). Das Kapital. [online] Moscow: Progress Publishers. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf.

Mastromatteo, G. and Rossi, S. (2024). ‘Sellers’ Inflation’ and Monetary Policy Interventions: A Critical Analysis. Review of Political Economy, pp.1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/09538259.2024.2354334.

McCarthy, M. (2016). The Monetary Hawks. [online] Available at: https://jacobin.com/2016/08/paul-volcker-ronald-reagan-fed-shock-inflation-unions/ [Accessed 10 Mar. 2025].

Meadway, J. (2022). Interest Rate Hikes Are Class War Against Workers. [online] Available at: https://jacobin.com/2022/05/interest-rate-hikes-bank-of-england-inflation-cost-of-living [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Meagher, M. (2020). Competition is Killing Us: How Big Business is Harming Our Society and Planet – and What to Do about It. London: Penguin Books.

Metcalfe, S. (2023). Are we in the age of the polycrisis? [online] Institute of Development Studies. Available at: https://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/are-we-in-the-age-of-the-polycrisis/.

Milne, S. (2014). Who’s to blame for the crisis, bankers or benefit claimants? [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/16/crisis-bankers-benefit-claimants-class [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Mirowski, P. (2023). Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown. [online] Verso. Available at: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2303-never-let-a-serious-crisis-go-to-waste?srsltid=AfmBOoroWcmpehBLMBX80NkpNfSzXz_ROnD52nt9zolZGUpHDjRmXalv [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Mishel, L., Gould, E. and Bivens, J. (2015). Wage stagnation in nine charts. [online] Economic Policy Institute. Available at: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/.

Neweconomybrief.net. (2024). The Spanish Success Story | NEB Digest. [online] Available at: https://www.neweconomybrief.net/the-digest/the-spanish-success-story [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

NIESR. (2024). UK Households Should Start Feeling Better Off as Election Looms – NIESR. [online] Available at: https://niesr.ac.uk/publications/uk-households-better-off-election-looms?type=uk-economic-outlook [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Opensocietyfoundations.org. (2022). Fault Lines: Global Views of a World in Crisis. [online] Available at: https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/fault-lines-global-perspectives-on-a-world-in-crisis#publications_download [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Owens, L. (2022). Congressional Testimony ‘Corporate Profits are Soaring as Prices Rise: Are Corporate Greed and Profiteering Fueling Inflation?’ [online] Available at: https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Lindsay%20Owens%20-%20Testimony%20-%20U.S.%20Senate%20Budget%20Committee.pdf.

Owens, L. (2024). Inflation Revelation: How Outsized Corporate Profits Drive Rising Costs. [online] Groundwork Collaborative. Available at: https://groundworkcollaborative.org/work/inflation-revelation-how-outsized-corporate-profits-drive-rising-costs/.

OXFAM (2024). INEQUALITY INC. [online] Available at: https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2024-01/Davos%202024%20Report-%20English.pdf.

Panetta, F. (2023). Speech. Everything everywhere all at once: responding to multiple global shocks. www.ecb.europa.eu. [online] Available at: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2023/html/ecb.sp230322_2~af38beedf3.en.html.

Parikh, T. (2025). The source of middle class anxiety. [online] @FinancialTimes. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/44736470-62b7-46ad-9d02-76614549b6a4? [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Parliament.uk. (2023). Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 – Parliamentary Bills – UK Parliament. [online] Available at: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3396.

Partington, R. (2025). Cutting ‘waste’ or more tax: how Reeves could appease OBR in spring statement. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/28/cutting-waste-or-more-tax-how-reeves-could-appease-obr-in-spring-statement? [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Perez, A., Cunningham-Cook, M., and Sirota, D. (2023). The Pundits Were Wrong: Corporate Greed Stoked Inflation. [online] Available at: https://jacobin.com/2023/05/inflation-corporate-greed-mainstream-media-pundits.

Polanyi, K. (1944). The Great Transformation: Economic and Political Origins of Our Time. New York: Rinehart.

Public Affairs, H. (2024). HUD Releases January 2024 Point-In-Time Count Report. [online] HUD.gov / U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Available at: https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/hud_no_24_327.

Race, M. (2024). More than 7 million adults still struggling to pay bills, survey finds. [online] BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68765769.

Raitano, L. (2024). Global corporate dividends hit record $1.66 trillion in 2023. Reuters. [online] 13 Mar. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/markets/global-corporate-dividends-hit-record-166-trillion-2023-2024-03-13/.

Raj, M. (2024). No, Corporate Profits Don’t Cause Inflation. [online] Mises Institute. Available at: https://mises.org/mises-wire/no-corporate-profits-dont-cause-inflation [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Ramaswamy, V. (2021). Woke, Inc. : inside corporate America’s social justice scam. New York: Center Street

Rao-Poolla, K. (2021). The Dangers of the Concentration of Media Ownership. [online] Berkeley High Jacket. Available at: https://berkeleyhighjacket.com/2021/entertainment/the-dangers-of-the-concentration-of-media-ownership.

Redwood, J. (2024). The New Great Inflation: How Western Central Banks Got It Wrong…and What They Should Do About It. [online] Available at: https://iea.org.uk/publications/the-new-great-inflation-how-western-central-banks-got-it-wrong-and-what-they-should-do-about-it/?utm_source=chatgpt.com [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Reich, R. (2021). Why corporate social responsibility is BS. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/26/why-corporate-social-responsibility-is-bs.

Reich, R. (2022). Speech. Corporate Profits are Soaring as Prices Rise: Are Corporate Greed and Profiteering Fueling Inflation? United States Senate Budget Committee. Available at: https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Robert%20Reich%20-%20Testimony%20-%20U.S.%20Senate%20Budget%20Committee.pdf

Repko, M. (2021). Walmart and Target clash with investors over strategy to keep prices low despite inflation. [online] CNBC. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/17/walmart-and-target-clash-with-investors-over-low-price-strategy-.html.

Reuters (2024). UK Food Inflation Could Hit Nearly 5% in 2025, Says Industry Researcher. Reuters. [online] 12 Dec. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-food-inflation-could-hit-nearly-5-2025-says-industry-researcher-2024-12-12/.

Reuters (2024). UK Food Inflation Could Hit Nearly 5% in 2025, Says Industry Researcher. Reuters. [online] 12 Dec. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-food-inflation-could-hit-nearly-5-2025-says-industry-researcher-2024-12-12/.

Reuters Staff (2023). UK workers see record pay rises, but inflation eats them up. Reuters. [online] 1 Nov. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-workers-see-record-pay-rises-inflation-eats-them-up-2023-11-01/.

Roosevelt, F,D. (1938). Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies. | The American Presidency Project. [online] Available at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-curbing-monopolies?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Sawyer, M. (2022). Monopoly capitalism in the past four decades. Cambridge Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/beac048.

Sawyer, M. (2023). Secular stagnation and monopoly capitalism. Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, 46(4), pp.545–565. https://doi.org/10.1080/01603477.2023.2270949.

Scirp.org. (2020). Totonchi, J. (2011). Macroeconomic Theories of Inflation. In 2011 International Conference on Economics and Finance Research (pp. 459-462). IACSIT Press. – References – Scientific Research Publishing. [online] Available at: https://www.scirp.org/reference/referencespapers?referenceid=3076041.

Scott, J. (2025). The Corporate Capture of America. [online] Available at: https://scottsuhy.com/2025/01/14/the-corporate-capture-of-america/ [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Sgaravatti, G., Tagliapietra, S. and Zachmann, G. (2022). National Policies to Shield Consumers from Rising Energy Prices. [online] Bruegel. Available at: https://www.bruegel.org/dataset/national-policies-shield-consumers-rising-energy-prices.

Shapiro, A. (2023). How Much Do Labor Costs Drive Inflation? – San Francisco Fed. [online] Available at: https://www.frbsf.org/research-and insights/publications/economic-letter/2023/05/how-much-do-labor-costs-drive-inflation/.

Sindreu, J. (2023). ‘Greedflation’ Is Real—and Probably Good for the Economy. [online] WSJ. Available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/greedflation-is-realand-probably-good-for-the-economy-6c475b8e [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Slattery, D., Nellis, J., Josifidis, K. and Losonc, A. (2013). Neoclassical economics: science or neoliberal ideology? European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, 10(3), pp.313–326. https://doi.org/10.4337/ejeep.2013.03.06.

Slattery, D., Nellis, J., Josifidis, K. and Losonc, A. (2013). Neoclassical economics: science or neoliberal ideology? European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, 10(3), pp.313–326. https://doi.org/10.4337/ejeep.2013.03.06.

Sloman, P. (2018). Redistribution in an Age of Neoliberalism: Market Economics, ‘Poverty Knowledge’, and the Growth of Working-Age Benefits in Britain, c. 1979–2010. Political Studies, 67(3), pp.732–751. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321718800495.

Smith, A. (1776) The Wealth of Nations. W. strahan and T. Cadell, London.

Stanfield, J.R. and Clarke, S. (1991). Keynesianism, Monetarism, and the Crisis of the State. Southern Economic Journal, 58(1), p.304. https://doi.org/10.2307/1060071.

Strauss, D. (2024). Workers lose ground in the global recovery. [online] @FinancialTimes. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/61d8cc21-6075-49d4-b0f4-89738e96724b?

Stein, J. (2023). Biden turns up pressure on corporate ‘price gouging’ as 2024 nears. Washington Post. [online] 4 Dec. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/12/01/biden-price-gouging-inflation/.

Stiglitz, J. and Regmi, I. (2022). The Causes of and Responses to Today’s Inflation. [online] Available at: https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/RI_CausesofandResponsestoTodaysInflation_Report_202212.pdf.

Stiglitz, J.E. (2024). Time for a Victory Lap? [online] The American Prospect. Available at: https://prospect.org/economy/2024-01-04-time-for-victory-lap/.

Storm, S. (2023). Profit Inflation Is Real. [online] Institute for New Economic Thinking. Available at: https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/profit-inflation-is-real.

Story, L. and Dash, E. (2009). Report Shows Bonuses Paid by Bailed-Out Banks. The New York Times. [online] 30 Jul. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/31pay.html.

Strauss, D. (2024). Workers lose ground in the global recovery. [online] @FinancialTimes. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/61d8cc21-6075-49d4-b0f4-89738e96724b? [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Studnicna, L. (2024). Europe can’t afford another austerity crisis. [online] Available at: https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/04/25/europe-cant-afford-another-austerity-crisis? [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

The Business Times. (2022). Inflation, interest rates and the housing paradox. [online] Available at: https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/opinion-features/columns/inflation-interest-rates-and-housing-paradox? [Accessed 9 Mar. 2025].

Tinsley, D. (2024). Households Living Paycheck to Paycheck Statistics 2024. [online] Bank of America Institute. Available at: https://institute.bankofamerica.com/economic-insights/paycheck-to-paycheck-lower-income-households.html.

Tooze, A. (2022). Welcome to the world of the polycrisis. Financial Times. [online] 28 Oct. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/498398e7-11b1-494b-9cd3-6d669dc3de33.

Trussell Trust (2024). End of Year Stats. [online] Trussell.org.uk. Available at: https://www.trussell.org.uk/news-and-research/latest-stats/end-of-year-stats.

Unicef. (2023). Children and the Cost-of-living Crisis | Innocenti Global Office of Research and Foresight. [online] Available at: https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/reports/children-and-cost-living-crisis.

Unite the Union. (2023). Unite Investigates: Profiteering across the economy—it’s systemic pdf. Available at: https://www.unitetheunion.org/media/5442/profiteering-across-the-economy-march-2023.pdf

Unite the Union. (2024). Unite Investigates: profiteering is breaking the eocnomy. Available at: https://www.unitetheunion.org/media/z3akzpao/profiteering-3.pdf

United Way NCA (2022). Child Poverty in America – Facts, Statistics. [online] United Way NCA. Available at: https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/child-poverty-in-america/.

Wearden, G. (2023). Britons ‘need to accept’ they’re poorer, says Bank of England economist. The Guardian. [online] 25 Apr. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/25/britons-need-to-accept-theyre-poorer-says-bank-of-england-economist.

Weber, I.M. and Wasner, E. (2023). Sellers’ inflation, Profits and conflict: Why Can Large Firms Hike Prices in an emergency? Review of Keynesian Economics, 11(2), pp.183–213.

White, S. (2023). The Business Standard. Fed will keep rates high thanks to inflation fueled by corporate greed, investors say. [online] Available at: https://www.tbsnews.net/bloomberg-special/fed-will-keep-rates-high-thanks-inflation-fueled-corporate-greed-investors-say.

Whiting, K. (2022). Cost of living crisis: 1 in 4 people struggling, poll shows. [online] World Economic Forum. Available at: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/05/cost-of-living-crisis-poll/.

Worldbank.org. (2025). Open Knowledge Repository. [online] Available at: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/e7ff924b-ec49-5019-94ce-75431ee93337 [Accessed 8 Mar. 2025].

Zinn, J.A. (2015). Stagflation and the Rejection of Keynesian Economics: A Case of Naive Falsification. SSRN Electronic Journal. [online] Available at: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2552610.

Further Reading on E-International Relations