Emi Nakamura

Emi Nakamura is an American economist and the Chancellor's Professor of Economics at University of California, Berkeley.[2]

Emi Nakamura
Nakamura presenting a talk in 2017
BornOctober 1980 (age 40)
CitizenshipAmerican, Canadian[1]
Alma materA.B. (2001), Princeton University
Ph.D. (2007), Harvard University
Spouse(s)Jón Steinsson
AwardsJohn Bates Clark Medal, 2019

Elaine Bennett Research Prize, 2014
Eccles Research Award in Finance and Economics, 2015
2014 IMF Generation Next: Top 25 Economists under 45
Sloan Research Fellowship 2014-2016 NSF Career Award 2011-2016

NSF Grant 2009-2011
Scientific career
FieldsEconomics
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Berkeley,
Columbia University
Doctoral advisorRobert Barro and Ariel Pakes
Websitehttps://eml.berkeley.edu/~enakamura/

Nakamura is a research associate and co-director of the Monetary Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research,[3] and a co-editor of the American Economic Review.[4][5]

She was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal[6][7] and elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.[8] She has been awarded an NSF Career Grant and Sloan Research Fellowship, and was the 2014 recipient of the Elaine Bennett Research Prize,[9][10] She was also named one of the top 25 economists under 45 in 2014 by the IMF[11] and named one of "the decade’s eight best young economists" in 2018 by The Economist.[12]

Education

Nakamura graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University 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.[13] Nakamura then went on to pursue graduate studies in economics at Harvard University, 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 and Ariel Pakes.[14]

Research

Nakamura's research focuses on empirical issues in macroeconomics, including price stickiness, the impact of fiscal 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.[6]". 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.[6]" 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.[15] 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.[15]

Personal

Nakamura is married to fellow economist and frequent co-author Jón Steinsson, with whom she has two children[16] and is the daughter of economists Alice Nakamura and Masao Nakamura[17][18] and the granddaughter of economist Guy Orcutt.

Selected works

Inflation and price dispersion
  • "Five facts about prices: A reevaluation of menu cost models" (with Jón Steinsson) This paper analyzes detailed microeconomic price data in the U.S. They document that, outside of sales, prices change relatively infrequently, giving support to macroeconomic models which feature price rigidity: the median frequency of price changes is 9-12% per month, Non-sale price changes make up a third of price decreases, the frequency of price increases have a positive relationship with inflation, but frequency of price decrease and size of price increases do not have any effect, the fluctuation of price change ranges, there is not an upward sloping hazard function in price changes.. They show that previous work finding more frequent price adjustment failed to take into account the effect of sales (which change prices, but do not constitute price flexibility in the sense relevant for macroeconomic models). They use their data firms' price-setting behavior to test the menu cost model of price rigidity and find mixed support. Full citation: Nakamura, Emi; Steinsson, Jón (2008). "Five facts about prices: A reevaluation of menu cost models" (PDF). The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 123 (4): 1415–1464. doi:10.1162/qjec.2008.123.4.1415. JSTOR 40506213. S2CID 1576112.
  • "The Elusive Costs of Inflation: Price Dispersion during the U.S. Great Inflation" (with Jón Steinsson, Patrick Sun and Daniel Villar) This paper attempts to measure the costs of inflation. In the commonly used New Keynesian macroeconomic models, the social costs of inflation arise from inefficient price dispersion. In typical models, higher inflation implies higher price dispersion, and therefore higher welfare losses. Nakamura et al. digitize price data from the era of high inflation in the US in the 1970s and 1980s to test this hypothesis. They find "no evidence that the absolute size of price changes rose during the Great Inflation", and conclude that "This suggests that the standard New Keynesian analysis of the welfare costs of inflation is wrong and its implications for the optimal inflation rate need to be reassessed". Full citation: Nakamura, Emi; Steinsson, Jón; Sun, Patrick; Villar, Daniel (2018). "The Elusive Costs of Inflation: Price Dispersion during the U.S. Great Inflation" (PDF). Quarterly Journal of Economics. 133 (4): 1933–1908. doi:10.1093/qje/qjy017. S2CID 14408509.

Monetary policy
  • "High-Frequency Identification of Monetary Non-Neutrality: The Information Effect" This paper uses financial market data in the thirty-minute window after Federal Reserve rate announcements to demonstrate that financial market expectations of real variables (the real interest rate, and economy growth) are responsive to news about monetary policy. In response to an interest rate hike, expectations of both nominal and real interest rates respond roughly one-for-one several years into the term structure. Forecasts of economic growth also increase, contrary to typical predictions of economic models. The paper argues that these facts are consistent with a model where Federal Reserve rate announcements provide information not only about monetary policy but also about economic fundamentals, and that this is an important causal channel of the effects of monetary policy on output. Full citation: Nakamura, Emi (2018). "High-Frequency Identification of Monetary Non-Neutrality: The Information Effect" (PDF). Quarterly Journal of Economics. 133 (3): 1283–1330. doi:10.1093/qje/qjy004. S2CID 30206128.
  • "The Power of Forward Guidance Revisited" (with Alisdair McKay and Jón Steinsson) Standard models imply that forward guidance has an extremely large effect on current real economic outcomes. This paper argues that the effects of forward guidance are likely to be substantially reduced (relative to this benchmark) if financial markets are incomplete in two plausible ways: specifically, if agents face borrowing constraints and uninsurable income risk. Full citation: McKay, Alisdair; Nakamura, Emi; Steinsson, Jón (2016). "The Power of Forward Guidance Revisited" (PDF). American Economic Review. 106 (10): 3133–3158. doi:10.1257/aer.20150063. S2CID 54010965.
  • "Monetary non-neutrality in a multisector menu cost model" (with Jón Steinsson) This paper shows that two alterations to the typical menu cost model – introducing heterogeneity in the frequency of firm price changes, and intermediate inputs – triple the real effects of nominal shocks relative to the benchmark model. This was able to reconcile a puzzle in prior work: the monetary policy transmission mechanism was thought to work through price rigidity, yet typical menu cost models calibrated to empirical evidence on price changes could not generate large effects of nominal shocks on real variables. Full citation: Nakamura, Emi; Steinsson, Jón (2010). "Monetary non-neutrality in a multisector menu cost model" (PDF). The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 125 (3): 961–1013. doi:10.1162/qjec.2010.125.3.961. JSTOR 27867504. S2CID 9417107.
  • "Accounting for incomplete pass-through" (with D Zerom) Full citation: Nakamura, Emi; Zerom, D (2010). "Accounting for incomplete pass-through" (PDF). The Review of Economic Studies. 77 (3): 1192–1230. doi:10.1111/j.1467-937x.2009.589.x. JSTOR 40835861. S2CID 6178966.
  • "A Plucking Model of Business Cycles” (with Stéphane Dupraz and Jón Steinsson) Models shows that economic activities change often, and stabilization policies will lower those changes but not cause any change to the level of activity. Milton Friedman believed that the average level of activity will increase if stabilization policies are implemented when economic fluctuations are below the economy's full potential ceiling. This is called the “plucking” model. In this research, Nakamura, Dupraz, and Steinsson uses the US unemployment rate to show an asymmetry that can be based on the plucking model. By using the unemployment rate, they were able to create their own plucking model that shows the business cycle. The model that they were able to create reflected the relationship between the nominal wage, behavior, and equilibrium. It was concluded from the plucking model that stabilization policies would impact unemployment by lowering the rate and therefore will have sizable welfare gains. Full citation: Nakamura, Emi; Dupraz, Stéphane; Steinsson, Jón (October 2019). A Plucking Model of Business Cycles (Working Paper). National Bureau of Economic Research. doi:10.3386/w26351. NBER Working Paper No. 26351.

Fiscal policy
  • "Fiscal stimulus in a monetary union: Evidence from US regions" (with Jón Steinsson) This paper uses regional variation in US military spending to estimate an "open economy multiplier" to fiscal policy shocks of 1.5. This empirical evidence "indicates that demand shocks can have large effects on output", particularly at the zero lower bound.[19] Full citation: Nakamura, Emi; Steinsson, Jón (2014). "Fiscal stimulus in a monetary union: Evidence from US regions" (PDF). The American Economic Review. 104 (3): 753–792. doi:10.1257/aer.104.3.753. JSTOR 42920719. S2CID 6641769.

Economic crises

References
  1. https://eml.berkeley.edu/~enakamura/cvenweb.pdf
  2. "Emi Nakamura". Department of Economics. Retrieved May 13, 2020.
  3. "Emi Nakamura". www.nber.org. Retrieved May 13, 2020.
  4. "Editors of the American Economic Review". American Economic Association. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
  5. "Meet our new faculty: Emi Nakamura, economics". Berkeley News. November 14, 2018. Retrieved April 18, 2019.
  6. "Emi Nakamura, Clark Medalist 2019". American Economic Association. Retrieved May 1, 2019.
  7. Eberly, Janice; Woodford, Michael (February 1, 2020). "Emi Nakamura: 2019 John Bates Clark Medalist". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 34 (1): 222–239. doi:10.1257/jep.34.1.222. ISSN 0895-3309.
  8. "Emi Nakamura". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved January 7, 2021.
  9. Emi Nakamura Recipient of the 2014 Elaine Bennett Research Prize. American Economic Association. aeaweb.org
  10. "Emi Nakamura Receives AEA's Elaine Bennett Research Prize | Columbia University - Economics". econ.columbia.edu. Archived from the original on December 23, 2017. Retrieved August 7, 2017.
  11. "NBER Reporter 2015 Number 1: Research Summary". www.nber.org. Retrieved August 7, 2017.
  12. "Our pick of the decade's eight best young economists". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
  13. Nakamura, Emi. Woodford, Michael; Princeton University. Department of Economics (eds.). "An Economy with Monetary Business Cycles". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. "Emi Nakamura - CV" (PDF).
  15. "Interview: Emi Nakamura" (PDF). Econ Focus--A publication of the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank. 2015.
  16. Rampell, Catherine (November 5, 2013). "Outsource Your Way to Success". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved August 7, 2017.
  17. "An Interview with Emi Nakamura". CSWEP News. 2015.
  18. CSWEP Talks. aeaweb.org
  19. Nakamura, Emi; Steinsson, Jón (October 2, 2011). "Does fiscal stimulus work in a monetary union? Evidence from US regions". VoxEU.org. Retrieved April 18, 2019.

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Awards
Preceded by
Parag Pathak		 Recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal
2019		 Most recent
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