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Can News About the Future Drive the Business Cycle?

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  • Rebelo, Sérgio
  • Jaimovich, Nir

Abstract

We propose a model that generates an economic expansion in response to good news about future total factor productivity (TFP) or investment-specific technical change. The model has three key elements: variable capital utilization, adjustment costs to investment, and preferences that exhibit a weak short-run wealth effect on the labour supply. These preferences nest the two classes of utility functions most widely used in the business cycle literature as special cases. Our model can generate recessions that resemble those of the post-war U.S. economy without relying on negative productivity shocks. The recessions are caused not by contemporaneous negative shocks but rather by lackluster news about future TFP or investment-specific technical change.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebelo, Sérgio & Jaimovich, Nir, 2006. "Can News About the Future Drive the Business Cycle?," CEPR Discussion Papers 5877, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5877
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business cycles; Expectations; News;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

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