Emi Nakamura is a Canadian-American economist. She is the Chancellor's Professor of Economics at
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
.
Nakamura is a research associate and co-director of the Monetary Economics Program of the
National Bureau of Economic Research
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...
, and a co-editor of the
American Economic Review.
Education
Nakamura graduated summa cum laude from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
with an A.B. in economics in 2001, completing a senior thesis titled "An Economy with Monetary Business Cycles" under the supervision of
Michael Woodford. Nakamura then went on to pursue graduate studies in economics at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, receiving a Ph.D. in economics in 2007 after completing her doctoral dissertation, titled "Price Adjustment, Pass-through and Monetary Policy", under the supervision of
Robert Barro
Robert Joseph Barro (born September 28, 1944) is an American macroeconomist and the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Barro is considered one of the founders of new classical macroeconomics, along with Robert Lucas, J ...
and
Ariel Pakes.
Research
Nakamura's research focuses on empirical issues in
macroeconomics
Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix ''makro-'' meaning "large" + ''economics'') is a branch of economics dealing with performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole.
For example, using interest rates, taxes, and ...
, including
price stickiness, the impact of
fiscal
Fiscal usually refers to government finance. In this context, it may refer to:
Economics
* Fiscal policy, use of government expenditure to influence economic development
* Fiscal policy debate
* Fiscal adjustment, a reduction in the government ...
shocks, and measurement errors in official statistics. Her citation for the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association states that Nakamura has "greatly increased our understanding of price-setting by firms and the effects of monetary and fiscal policies", noting her "creativity in suggesting new sources of data to address long-standing questions.
". Emi Nakamura is a prominent figure in the field of New Keynesian Economics. New Keynesian Economics incorporates microeconomic theories and ideas and places them into macroeconomic theories. Nakamura demonstrates this in her work, “Five facts about prices”, by including microdata from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to prove macroeconomic ideas.
" In her most cited work, "Five facts about prices", she and Jón Steinsson showed that many measured price changes are due to temporary sales, scheduled far in advance, rather than happening as dynamic responses to economic conditions. This suggested that even though economic data features frequent price changes, this can be compatible with macroeconomic models featuring substantial price rigidity.
In another highly cited work, "Fiscal stimulus in a monetary union", she and Jón Steinsson use variation in US government military spending across states to estimate the open-economy government spending multiplier, finding values substantially higher than one. This confirms the prediction of Keynesian macroeconomic models that fiscal stimulus can have substantial effects on output, particularly at the zero lower bound.
Recognition
She was awarded the
John Bates Clark Medal
The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." The award is named after the ...
and elected as a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
in 2019. She has been awarded an
NSF
NSF may stand for:
Political organizations
*National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party
*NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party
*National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political gr ...
Career Grant and
Sloan Research Fellowship
The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States.
...
, and was the 2014 recipient of the
Elaine Bennett Research Prize, She was also named one of the top 25 economists under 45 in 2014 by the
IMF and named one of "the decade’s eight best young economists" in 2018 by
The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...
. In 2021 she was named a
Fellow of the Econometric Society
In the scientific discipline of economics, the Econometric Society is a learned society devoted to the advancement of economics by using mathematical and statistical methods. This article is a list of its (current and in memory) fellows.
Fellows
...
.
Personal life
Nakamura is married to fellow economist and frequent co-author
Jón Steinsson
Jón Steinsson is Chancellor's Professor of Economics at University of California, Berkeley, a research associate and co-director of the Monetary Economics program of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and associate editor of both American ...
, with whom she has two children and is the daughter of economists
Alice Nakamura
Alice Orcutt Nakamura (born 1945) is an American-Canadian economist and writer. She is a fellow of the Canadian Economics Association, which is the highest honour of the association. She is currently a professor of finance and management science at ...
and Masao Nakamura
CSWEP Talks
aeaweb.org and the granddaughter of economist Guy Orcutt
Guy Henderson Orcutt (July 5, 1917 – March 5, 2006) was an American econometrician. He was a long-time faculty member at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and is known for developing the Cochrane–Orcutt estimation procedure.
A native of ...
.
Selected works
Inflation and price dispersion
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Monetary policy
*
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Fiscal policy
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Economic crises
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References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Nakamura, Emi
1980 births
21st-century American economists
American academics of Japanese descent
American women economists
Canadian emigrants to the United States
Canadian people of Japanese descent
Canadian women economists
Columbia University faculty
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the Econometric Society
Harvard University alumni
Living people
Princeton University alumni
21st-century American women