What are price mark-up shocks?

Using US data, we show that a large share of the variation in price mark-up shocks estimated from standard Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models can be explained by energy and commodity price dynamics. We identify robust drivers of the price mark-up in the US and find that around 30% of the variation in their changes can be explained by variation in energy, metal and import prices. The explanatory power increases to over 60% if short-term fluctuations in price mark-ups are smoothed.