Remember how Stephanie Kelton and the MMT people have suddenly evaporated now that inflation has come roaring back?
Were Weber's ideas to be implemented, I would expect a similar evaporation as they imploded as well.
Jonah Salk cured polio and then spent 30 years trying to cure the common cold with vitamin C. Sometimes, the heterodox researchers aren't eccentric, countercultural geniuses; sometimes they're just wrong.
not just sometimes - the vast majority of the time heterodox thinkers are dead wrong. We still need them because occasionally they move the ball forward and makes it all worth it. Similar to startups most fail but the ones that succeed inject crucial vitality into the economy. Just need to avoid implementing the big ideas from these mavericks widely in the real world before they are proven to be correct, otherwise you end up with total shitshows, from wework to communism.
also from the world of medicine, Heimlich may have saved a lot of people from choking, but his later ideas on infecting people with malaria to cure cancer & AIDS were far less successful...
I look forward to the day where MMT believers are divested of their steadfast loyalty to Kelton et al and collectively decide to egress their buildings in order to establish a physical connection with their local variety of Poaceae.
Great piece. I’m with you that the lack of an explicit model is frustrating. For example, she has said that in the face of a bottleneck, I know my competitor can’t increase Q so I raise P and that this is “no longer constrained by competition.” But that’s exactly what happens in competitive markets! See first half of this post https://www.economicforces.xyz/p/inflation-or-when-can-honda-raise
I’ve asked her for empirical predictions that are different than supply and demand but she’s never responded. Probably fair since it doesn’t take a long search through my tweets to see my pulling my hair out that this is getting attention
The idea that Krugman would've called Weber stupid merely for suggesting any variety of price control also seems like journalistic malpractice, given that Krugman was already advocating for the kind of _limited_ price controls that are deemed successful in the article.
Also, just in general, if you're in a situation where you have inflationary pressure -- either growth of aggregate demand out-stripping the ability of supply to keep up, or a negative shock to supply such that suppliers suddenly can't deliver as much _stuff_ as the demand side expected to buy -- then orthodox econ says you _expect_ to see abnormally high profits, as suppliers hike prices in order to avoid having buyers lined up out the door even as their shelves go bare. Like, that's the mechanism that's supposed to incentivize new entrants to competitive markets, investment in new productive capacity and innovation, etc. People see the high profits, say, "I wanna piece of that!" and then come in and compete away the high profits.
The entire notion of "greedflation" is an explanation searching for a conundrum where there never was one.
This is not to say there aren't policy responses we should be considering -- there's a decent amount of evidence that rising inequality and a shift of income flows from wages to equity profits has to do with market power (monopoly and monopsony at choke-points in various industries). The Biden administration is, in fits and starts, trying to do something about that, occasionally even with GOP agreement. And as noted, there have been interventions to smooth the path of prices in certain markets. But the idea that corporations suddenly got MORE greedy than they always have been, or that higher profit margins are an indicator that they're pulling a fast one, is pretty hard to justify.
yes, the "greedflation" team never seems to talk about supply or demand... And while there may be some essentials that have pretty inelastic demand, there are many more items where that's the dominant dynamic.
Broad and dismissive claims that "suspending habeus corpus would never be beneficial" are simply inaccurate, because it worked out okay the one time that it was implemented (during a literally unique moment in American history with no antecedent or subsequent close counterpart). Therefore, we should do it again, today. I have no stronger argument.
What is your evidence that they worked then? How confident are you that allowing prices to float and supporting the poor financially wou'd not have produced better outcomes.
Price controls eliminate the mechanisms that bring demand and supply in alignment and so generally require rationing.
I'd just add that I think any term with a name like 'greedflation' ought to spark immediate skepticism. A more nuetral academic term would be more like: game theoretic deviation from competitive equilibrium.
Sure, when it comes time for politics you've gotta sell your message but it's a good signal it's being pushed politically and emotionally and thus one ought to be wary of it as a purely theoretical construct (eg it may have support for reasons other than epistemic justification).
I do think there is a concept of “greedflation,” but not in the examples cited in the referenced articles. Regarding petroleum, the formation of OPEC in the 1970’s is an example. The US healthcare system is another example. First it was providers of service who received price controls first. Currently it is the pharmaceutical industry (which include the clearinghouses/distributors) who are facing the music. Let’s see if they can escape legislative ire. It also makes one wonder if Mark Cuban was planted to disrupt the pharmaceutical industry...
I agree about OPEC. And in fact, Weber's ideas do apply pretty well to what we've been doing to break OPEC's power and bring down inflation since summer 2022!
Going beyond just OPEC, any situation where some player has gotten into a position of monopoly or monopsony, so they can simply set prices, has the potential for abuse, and oligopolies where there are explicit or tacit coordination mechanisms can be just as bad. Oligopolies and monopolies inherently call for regulation -- that's why in "natural monopoly" markets like utilities we either do public provision or we regulate heavily.
I think there is a quite strong argument that the consolidation of industries / growth of market power is a significant explanation for the shift of income from wages into profits over the last few decades.
I know Matt Stoller doesn't always get along with the Neoliberal Shill crowd, but I think he often has more in common with folks who subscribe to reasonably-orthodox New Old Keynesianism (in the tradition of Krugman) than he recognizes. I would really like to see a podcast or text "symposium" of him working through where he actually disagrees with people about this stuff. (e.g. I know MattY historically was a bit of a cheerleader for Amazon, but I think Stoller has the better side of the argument there in terms of Amazon's engagement in anti-competitive practices -- stuff like making sellers eat the cost of their free shipping program by banning them from selling on Amazon while simultaneously setting a lower price on some other platform where they charge for shipping.)
Also Stoller's deep-dives into weird industry roll-ups, like the cheerleading monopoly, are always fascinating.
I do not believe there is a component of greed which creates generalized inflation. However I believe there are conditions which are amenable to greed. Oligopolies, defended by barriers to competition such as high capital requirements or government regulation, are vulnerable to excess profit taking from a capitive market. If government subsidies are involved, then the stage is set. Historically we witnessed Enron (among others) fleecing the state of California in 2000 creating an energy crisis.
For the German situation, if the war continues and there is an ongoing shortage of natural gas into the next winter, it won’t take long for distributors to believe that they can take advantage of the situation. Weber might then be justified in her opinion.
Here in Australia, I think "greedflation" is an idea being increasingly more accepted by left-wing people, from some Reddit users to left-wing think tanks like Australia Institute, and newspapers like The Guardian:
It's really nice to hear from people with alternative ideas like you, so if possible, could you look at the example that I cited out, and point to problems in their reasoning?
I might be completely misunderstanding but I'm going to take a stab at it anyway. First the cruelty directed at this women is rather repugnant. Moving on, I'm not at all fond of price controls but I can see why the argument might be necessary because of inflation. Its the market distortion that really bothers me. The effect of QE/zirp/stock buybacks/ the roll over of debt in many zombie companies and the bailouts cant be called a market. In a more competitive market system less prone to boom/bust you would have less need for price controls.
Its so hard to even examine a simple sector like energy with all the entanglements, convoluted pricing . Maybe I'm just not understanding all the inputs, tax credits, subsidies, labor, capitol costs (uneven) and all the international flows.
Not at all statistical but I still think greedflation is a component. Just my gut.
Greedflation means to me that prices are artificially inflated, either through deliberate intent, supply/demand issue or a combination of both. Statistically if you look at the 70% of the economy and the real people in that economy, they are suffering. Yet asset portfolios are producing glowing results. The math doesn't add up. So that means unfair competition, market consolidation, poor fiscal policies, barriers to entry are limiting capital to flow productively. Profits in certain sectors are obscene. Almost mathematically not viable even. Particularly over the last 20 years with the repeal of glass steagall. I think, (still digging) its a house of cards, built on unsound principles causing market distortion and unreasonable high prices. The MMT excess liquidity idea makes everything almost valueless.
I forgot to add as far as I know/read, the economy has never been in an environment with this balance sheet, wealth distortions due to bailouts, and high risk financial instruments chasing gains. Repealing Glass steagall and qe create a host of unintended consequences. I'm rambling......time for coffee
Everything is a network. Networks are fundamental to everything around and within us; both physical and mental models. They explain markets, theory of the firm, all of our laws, social interaction (philosophy and religion), even the biology and chemistry of our bodies and the physical laws that govern the universe. Understanding how networks work and how to model humanity's networks on those found in nature will lead to generative and sustainable growth. It's not utopia, but it's better than what we've believed in and understood to date that has led to extreme cycles of excess and collapse throughout human history. With networks everything is marginal and multi-dimensional/contextual, unlike the mostly average and 1 or 2 dimensional thinking today. Them's my two cents on the failures of economics as a profession.
Usually your writing is limpid and easy to follow.
Here you quote the fed as saying that firms marked up prices in anticipation of cost increases and follow this with:
“ In other words, the Kansas City Fed paper presents evidence against Weber’s claim that market power is responsible for increased inflation”
I would have imagined that you have a boatload of market power if you can raise prices just because of something that you imagine is going to happen in the future.
Right. The Kansas City Fed is saying that companies think they'll have to pay more to make stuff very soon, so they're raising prices in anticipation of that cost increase. That's not an act of market power.
I don't know if the Kansas City Fed is right that this is what's going on, but this is what they think.
Well I guess we have a disagreement on the meaning of market power. I thought it was kind of a synonym for pricing power or the ability to set the price based on things going on in one’s mind as opposed to having the price imposed upon you by the market. That seems to me what the fed is referring to.
It is. When companies have pricing power, they can choose whether or not to raise prices in response to an increase in costs. When they have no pricing power, they pretty much have to raise prices in response to a rise in costs.
Rbb, it is important to distinguish between "setting prices" in the accounting sense of "firms publish their prices" and the economic causation sense of "firms have the ability to raise prices arbitrarily without losing sales".
I think this is getting easier to see with the explosion of point of sale tipping. So many more firms now have a screen asking if I would like to tip 15%, 20%, or 25%. Consumers are actually VOLUNTARILY adding mark-ups on things they not only never tipped on before but also where the good or service will not change based on the tip. This is strong evidence of excess money supply/aggregate demand.
Why raise prices in anticipation in a "lumpy" fashion rather than tracking the cost of inputs, though? Sure you'll have to keep doing it but in the interim you're grabbing marketshare from competitors who have hiked prices by more -- shouldn't this mirror the same "competitive markets converge on zero economic profit" result that obtains for fixed or decreasing input costs?
I have two big concerns with these kind of theories. First is that in addition to the usual incentive for academic novelty there is a hunger in the broader academic world to find ways in which economic results can be explained by factors like greed which we can blame/praise people for and thereby make the economy understandable in an intuitive way (we're social not mathematical creatures).
I fear this leads to a tendency to look too hard for any theory or data that might support such a view. Given how noisy economic data is to being with we should already expect false positives sometimes so call me somewhat skeptical.
Second, and more importantly, there is a huge difference between the finding that in theory some control measure would be optimal and showing that it's not only robust to error but isn't vulnerable to manipulation or induces regulatory capture.
I think a lot of these heterodox theorists are capitulating to sentiment their followers are feeling towards wealth inequality(jealousy). The traditional economic path seems to be achieving relatively good results when looking at efficiency, prosperity, and even traditional metrics for competition(HHI, market concentration, profit margin, price elasticity, etc). There will however, always be demand for these types of academics as long as there are hierarchies.
Like everyone else, the country was facing runaway food inflation. Unlike most place, politicians began seriously debating price controls. Within a few weeks the major grocers announced they were reducing prices, with one promising to cut produce prices by 12%. All of this was a direct result of mere discussion of price controls.
Remember how Stephanie Kelton and the MMT people have suddenly evaporated now that inflation has come roaring back?
Were Weber's ideas to be implemented, I would expect a similar evaporation as they imploded as well.
Jonah Salk cured polio and then spent 30 years trying to cure the common cold with vitamin C. Sometimes, the heterodox researchers aren't eccentric, countercultural geniuses; sometimes they're just wrong.
not just sometimes - the vast majority of the time heterodox thinkers are dead wrong. We still need them because occasionally they move the ball forward and makes it all worth it. Similar to startups most fail but the ones that succeed inject crucial vitality into the economy. Just need to avoid implementing the big ideas from these mavericks widely in the real world before they are proven to be correct, otherwise you end up with total shitshows, from wework to communism.
also from the world of medicine, Heimlich may have saved a lot of people from choking, but his later ideas on infecting people with malaria to cure cancer & AIDS were far less successful...
I put in the work. Enough to see there's nothing there.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/examining-an-mmt-model-in-detail
Nothing personal, man, but I think we're all going to take Noah's word on this one. Even me, who commonly disagrees with him about a lot.
I look forward to the day where MMT believers are divested of their steadfast loyalty to Kelton et al and collectively decide to egress their buildings in order to establish a physical connection with their local variety of Poaceae.
Who do you think you are convincing with this sort of rude and arrogant post?
Great piece. I’m with you that the lack of an explicit model is frustrating. For example, she has said that in the face of a bottleneck, I know my competitor can’t increase Q so I raise P and that this is “no longer constrained by competition.” But that’s exactly what happens in competitive markets! See first half of this post https://www.economicforces.xyz/p/inflation-or-when-can-honda-raise
I also found the "price-maker who can't raise prices until competitors do" to be very confusing. How is that a price-maker?
Maybe there is a more complex implicit collusion model going on but now you have free parameters everywhere and can tell any story you want.
It's especially confusing when I can't even see what the parameters are!
I’ve asked her for empirical predictions that are different than supply and demand but she’s never responded. Probably fair since it doesn’t take a long search through my tweets to see my pulling my hair out that this is getting attention
The idea that Krugman would've called Weber stupid merely for suggesting any variety of price control also seems like journalistic malpractice, given that Krugman was already advocating for the kind of _limited_ price controls that are deemed successful in the article.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/opinion/europe-russia-energy.html
Also, just in general, if you're in a situation where you have inflationary pressure -- either growth of aggregate demand out-stripping the ability of supply to keep up, or a negative shock to supply such that suppliers suddenly can't deliver as much _stuff_ as the demand side expected to buy -- then orthodox econ says you _expect_ to see abnormally high profits, as suppliers hike prices in order to avoid having buyers lined up out the door even as their shelves go bare. Like, that's the mechanism that's supposed to incentivize new entrants to competitive markets, investment in new productive capacity and innovation, etc. People see the high profits, say, "I wanna piece of that!" and then come in and compete away the high profits.
The entire notion of "greedflation" is an explanation searching for a conundrum where there never was one.
This is not to say there aren't policy responses we should be considering -- there's a decent amount of evidence that rising inequality and a shift of income flows from wages to equity profits has to do with market power (monopoly and monopsony at choke-points in various industries). The Biden administration is, in fits and starts, trying to do something about that, occasionally even with GOP agreement. And as noted, there have been interventions to smooth the path of prices in certain markets. But the idea that corporations suddenly got MORE greedy than they always have been, or that higher profit margins are an indicator that they're pulling a fast one, is pretty hard to justify.
yes, the "greedflation" team never seems to talk about supply or demand... And while there may be some essentials that have pretty inelastic demand, there are many more items where that's the dominant dynamic.
Fantastic article. True price controls are an absolutely terrible idea.
Only if coupled with strict rationing. Would that fly today?
Broad and dismissive claims that "suspending habeus corpus would never be beneficial" are simply inaccurate, because it worked out okay the one time that it was implemented (during a literally unique moment in American history with no antecedent or subsequent close counterpart). Therefore, we should do it again, today. I have no stronger argument.
The short answer is no, it would not fly today lol
What is your evidence that they worked then? How confident are you that allowing prices to float and supporting the poor financially wou'd not have produced better outcomes.
Price controls eliminate the mechanisms that bring demand and supply in alignment and so generally require rationing.
I'd just add that I think any term with a name like 'greedflation' ought to spark immediate skepticism. A more nuetral academic term would be more like: game theoretic deviation from competitive equilibrium.
Sure, when it comes time for politics you've gotta sell your message but it's a good signal it's being pushed politically and emotionally and thus one ought to be wary of it as a purely theoretical construct (eg it may have support for reasons other than epistemic justification).
Well, the proponents have been trying out terms like "seller's inflation", but "greedflation" stuck.
That would be a much better term.
I do think there is a concept of “greedflation,” but not in the examples cited in the referenced articles. Regarding petroleum, the formation of OPEC in the 1970’s is an example. The US healthcare system is another example. First it was providers of service who received price controls first. Currently it is the pharmaceutical industry (which include the clearinghouses/distributors) who are facing the music. Let’s see if they can escape legislative ire. It also makes one wonder if Mark Cuban was planted to disrupt the pharmaceutical industry...
I agree about OPEC. And in fact, Weber's ideas do apply pretty well to what we've been doing to break OPEC's power and bring down inflation since summer 2022!
Going beyond just OPEC, any situation where some player has gotten into a position of monopoly or monopsony, so they can simply set prices, has the potential for abuse, and oligopolies where there are explicit or tacit coordination mechanisms can be just as bad. Oligopolies and monopolies inherently call for regulation -- that's why in "natural monopoly" markets like utilities we either do public provision or we regulate heavily.
I think there is a quite strong argument that the consolidation of industries / growth of market power is a significant explanation for the shift of income from wages into profits over the last few decades.
I know Matt Stoller doesn't always get along with the Neoliberal Shill crowd, but I think he often has more in common with folks who subscribe to reasonably-orthodox New Old Keynesianism (in the tradition of Krugman) than he recognizes. I would really like to see a podcast or text "symposium" of him working through where he actually disagrees with people about this stuff. (e.g. I know MattY historically was a bit of a cheerleader for Amazon, but I think Stoller has the better side of the argument there in terms of Amazon's engagement in anti-competitive practices -- stuff like making sellers eat the cost of their free shipping program by banning them from selling on Amazon while simultaneously setting a lower price on some other platform where they charge for shipping.)
Also Stoller's deep-dives into weird industry roll-ups, like the cheerleading monopoly, are always fascinating.
I do not believe there is a component of greed which creates generalized inflation. However I believe there are conditions which are amenable to greed. Oligopolies, defended by barriers to competition such as high capital requirements or government regulation, are vulnerable to excess profit taking from a capitive market. If government subsidies are involved, then the stage is set. Historically we witnessed Enron (among others) fleecing the state of California in 2000 creating an energy crisis.
For the German situation, if the war continues and there is an ongoing shortage of natural gas into the next winter, it won’t take long for distributors to believe that they can take advantage of the situation. Weber might then be justified in her opinion.
“ the notion that inflation is caused by companies’ monopolistic behavior rather than by macroeconomic factors “
So if this is the case then why are Price Controls a better solution than improved competition policy?
Thank you Noah for this article!
Here in Australia, I think "greedflation" is an idea being increasingly more accepted by left-wing people, from some Reddit users to left-wing think tanks like Australia Institute, and newspapers like The Guardian:
https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/oecd-report-shows-corporate-profits-contributed-far-more-to-inflation-in-australia-than-wages/
It's really nice to hear from people with alternative ideas like you, so if possible, could you look at the example that I cited out, and point to problems in their reasoning?
Good piece but you seem to have an unfinished sentence:
" As so often in this debate, the "greedflation" proponents..."
Ahh, thanks, fixed!
Thanks Noah. You might be interested in reading about the Australian Government’s price caps introduced late in 2022 on gas and coal prices.
I might be completely misunderstanding but I'm going to take a stab at it anyway. First the cruelty directed at this women is rather repugnant. Moving on, I'm not at all fond of price controls but I can see why the argument might be necessary because of inflation. Its the market distortion that really bothers me. The effect of QE/zirp/stock buybacks/ the roll over of debt in many zombie companies and the bailouts cant be called a market. In a more competitive market system less prone to boom/bust you would have less need for price controls.
Its so hard to even examine a simple sector like energy with all the entanglements, convoluted pricing . Maybe I'm just not understanding all the inputs, tax credits, subsidies, labor, capitol costs (uneven) and all the international flows.
Not at all statistical but I still think greedflation is a component. Just my gut.
When you say "greedflation is a component", what does that mean?
Greedflation means to me that prices are artificially inflated, either through deliberate intent, supply/demand issue or a combination of both. Statistically if you look at the 70% of the economy and the real people in that economy, they are suffering. Yet asset portfolios are producing glowing results. The math doesn't add up. So that means unfair competition, market consolidation, poor fiscal policies, barriers to entry are limiting capital to flow productively. Profits in certain sectors are obscene. Almost mathematically not viable even. Particularly over the last 20 years with the repeal of glass steagall. I think, (still digging) its a house of cards, built on unsound principles causing market distortion and unreasonable high prices. The MMT excess liquidity idea makes everything almost valueless.
I forgot to add as far as I know/read, the economy has never been in an environment with this balance sheet, wealth distortions due to bailouts, and high risk financial instruments chasing gains. Repealing Glass steagall and qe create a host of unintended consequences. I'm rambling......time for coffee
Everything is a network. Networks are fundamental to everything around and within us; both physical and mental models. They explain markets, theory of the firm, all of our laws, social interaction (philosophy and religion), even the biology and chemistry of our bodies and the physical laws that govern the universe. Understanding how networks work and how to model humanity's networks on those found in nature will lead to generative and sustainable growth. It's not utopia, but it's better than what we've believed in and understood to date that has led to extreme cycles of excess and collapse throughout human history. With networks everything is marginal and multi-dimensional/contextual, unlike the mostly average and 1 or 2 dimensional thinking today. Them's my two cents on the failures of economics as a profession.
Usually your writing is limpid and easy to follow.
Here you quote the fed as saying that firms marked up prices in anticipation of cost increases and follow this with:
“ In other words, the Kansas City Fed paper presents evidence against Weber’s claim that market power is responsible for increased inflation”
I would have imagined that you have a boatload of market power if you can raise prices just because of something that you imagine is going to happen in the future.
Right. The Kansas City Fed is saying that companies think they'll have to pay more to make stuff very soon, so they're raising prices in anticipation of that cost increase. That's not an act of market power.
I don't know if the Kansas City Fed is right that this is what's going on, but this is what they think.
Well I guess we have a disagreement on the meaning of market power. I thought it was kind of a synonym for pricing power or the ability to set the price based on things going on in one’s mind as opposed to having the price imposed upon you by the market. That seems to me what the fed is referring to.
It is. When companies have pricing power, they can choose whether or not to raise prices in response to an increase in costs. When they have no pricing power, they pretty much have to raise prices in response to a rise in costs.
Rbb, it is important to distinguish between "setting prices" in the accounting sense of "firms publish their prices" and the economic causation sense of "firms have the ability to raise prices arbitrarily without losing sales".
I think this is getting easier to see with the explosion of point of sale tipping. So many more firms now have a screen asking if I would like to tip 15%, 20%, or 25%. Consumers are actually VOLUNTARILY adding mark-ups on things they not only never tipped on before but also where the good or service will not change based on the tip. This is strong evidence of excess money supply/aggregate demand.
Why raise prices in anticipation in a "lumpy" fashion rather than tracking the cost of inputs, though? Sure you'll have to keep doing it but in the interim you're grabbing marketshare from competitors who have hiked prices by more -- shouldn't this mirror the same "competitive markets converge on zero economic profit" result that obtains for fixed or decreasing input costs?
I have two big concerns with these kind of theories. First is that in addition to the usual incentive for academic novelty there is a hunger in the broader academic world to find ways in which economic results can be explained by factors like greed which we can blame/praise people for and thereby make the economy understandable in an intuitive way (we're social not mathematical creatures).
I fear this leads to a tendency to look too hard for any theory or data that might support such a view. Given how noisy economic data is to being with we should already expect false positives sometimes so call me somewhat skeptical.
Second, and more importantly, there is a huge difference between the finding that in theory some control measure would be optimal and showing that it's not only robust to error but isn't vulnerable to manipulation or induces regulatory capture.
I think a lot of these heterodox theorists are capitulating to sentiment their followers are feeling towards wealth inequality(jealousy). The traditional economic path seems to be achieving relatively good results when looking at efficiency, prosperity, and even traditional metrics for competition(HHI, market concentration, profit margin, price elasticity, etc). There will however, always be demand for these types of academics as long as there are hierarchies.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/ecb-lagarde-says-corporate-profits-contributed-to-inflation/?fbclid=IwAR3bSrPHdyM3PozQBr62u_fTWQPsPUkSpu7yhH4a5U9RXBW8WogyCYgv4gc
Again, this is simply the observation that profits went up and prices also went up.
What's interesting is her comments about there being more data about wages than profits
How would you respond to the Swedish experience?
Like everyone else, the country was facing runaway food inflation. Unlike most place, politicians began seriously debating price controls. Within a few weeks the major grocers announced they were reducing prices, with one promising to cut produce prices by 12%. All of this was a direct result of mere discussion of price controls.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-27/swedish-grocers-pledge-price-cuts-after-soaring-food-inflation