excuseflation

The key question is, in an economy where the consumer continues to spend freely, how sticky this “excuseflation” proves to be and how high the Federal Reserve will have to drive up interest rates to prompt businesses to lower prices, or at least stop raising them.

2023 March 9, Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal, “‘Excuseflation’ keeps prices and corporate profits high”, in Bloomberg

The power of excuseflation is that it allows apologists to, well, make excuses. When egg prices shot up in January, Big Egg was able to blame it all on bird-flu.

2023 March 11, Cory Doctrow, “Excuseflation”, in Medium

These may be entirely legitimate reasons to raise prices but the companies engaging in excuseflation are seen as exploiting the situation.

2023 March 24, Daily Mail City, Finance Reporter, “INVESTING EXPLAINED: What you need to know about Excuseflation – a ploy by companies to hike prices, also known as greedflation”, in Mail Online

Excuseflation The pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine both had material impacts on the availability of goods and services. […] Executives say they needed to pass along their own increased costs to protect their margins. Skeptics see excuses at play.

2024 March 7, Enda Curran, “‘Shrinkflation’ and Other Terms for Inflationary Times”, in Bloomberg

2020 was the first year that a lot of people saw shortage problems in supermarkets. In that situation we are also more likely to accept price increases. So yes, I think there is some excuseflation in that, in a context of shocks and emergencies, it changes the mindset of consumers.

2024 March 12, Isabella Weber, quotee, “Isabella Weber: ‘It’s time to lower rates’”, in CE Noticias Financieras, English edition, Miami, translation of El Pais by Ignacio Fariza, “Isabella Weber: ‘Es hora de bajar tipos’”