At this point, I feel like people are rising prices because everyone else is rising prices because “inflation.” Literally my wife raised her prices for haircuts simply because everyone else was and she was getting comments that she was too inexpensive.
Yes, there's absolutely a well-established phenomena that expected inflation will cause realized inflation. That's why the Fed (and likely other central banks) have to "break" inflation by showing they will get it back to 2% no matter what. If people believe inflation will be 2% the next couple years, it will help cause inflation be 2% the next couple years due to not causing the treadmill of price increases.
