By Matt Egan for CNN

Some progressives have frequently blamed corporate greed for fueling the high cost of living that Americans are fed up with.

Yet new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco casts doubt on the greedflation theory.

Economists at the SF Fed found that corporate price gouging was not a primary catalyst for the inflation surge of 2021 to 2022.

The Fed researchers did find that some companies exercised pricing power by raising prices above their production costs – a gap known as markups.

For instance, markups spiked for gasoline, cars and other goods in 2021. Likewise, there were increased markups for repair, general merchandise, laundry, personal care and other services, according to the Fed.

‘Not unusual’

Of course, the inflation crisis was not limited to just a few key sectors. It was economy-wide. (The annual inflation rate fell slightly in April, but it still remains well above the Fed’s 2% target.)

When zooming out and looking at markups across the economy, the SF Fed economists found little evidence that price gouging was the main culprit.

“Aggregate markups – the more relevant measure for overall inflation – have stayed essentially flat since the start of the recovery,” the paper concluded. “Rising markups have not been a main driver of the recent surge and subsequent decline in inflation during the current recovery.”

In fact, the SF Fed found that the path of collective markups over the past three years “is not unusual compared with previous recoveries.”

The preceding article originally appeared on May 15, 2024 at CNN’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law. To read the rest of the story, please click here. More from Reuters here.