Nakamura graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts in economics in 2001, completing a senior thesis titled "An Economy with Monetary Business Cycles" under the supervision of Michael Woodford.[6] 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.[7]
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", and cited her "creativity in suggesting new sources of data to address long-standing questions".[8] Nakamura is a prominent figure in the field of new Keynesian economics, which 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.[8]
In her most cited work, "Five facts about prices", Nakamura 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.[9] In another highly cited work, "Fiscal stimulus in a monetary union", she and Jón Steinsson use variation in United States 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.[9]
Nakamura is married to fellow economist and frequent co-author Jón Steinsson, with whom she has two children.[17] She is the granddaughter of economist Guy Orcutt, and the daughter of economists Alice Nakamura and Masao Nakamura.[18][19]
Nakamura, Emi; Dupraz, Stéphane; Steinsson, Jón (October 2019). A Plucking Model of Business Cycles(PDF) (Working Paper). National Bureau of Economic Research. doi:10.3386/w26351. NBER Working Paper No. 26351.
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