Nominal rigidities, news-driven business cycles, and monetary policy

A news-driven business cycle is a positive comovement in consumption, labor, investment, and output caused by positive news about the future. Standard real business cycle models do not generate it. In this paper, we find that a used market friction - i.e., sticky prices - can be a source of news-driven business cycles from news about future technology growth, technology level, and expansionary monetary policy shocks. The key mechanism is the countercyclical movements of markups through nominal rigidities.