Short answers, pulled from the story.
Emi Nakamura is a Canadian-American economist and the E. Morris Cox Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. She is known for her empirical approach to macroeconomics, particularly her research on how firms set prices and how fiscal and monetary policy affect economic output. She co-edits the American Economic Review and serves as co-director of the Monetary Economics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
In their paper 'Five facts about prices,' Nakamura and Jón Steinsson found that many measured price changes in economic data are due to temporary sales planned far in advance, not dynamic responses to economic conditions. This showed that frequent price changes in the data can be compatible with macroeconomic models featuring substantial price rigidity. They drew on microdata from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the paper has been widely cited in macroeconomics textbooks.
In 'Fiscal stimulus in a monetary union,' Nakamura and Steinsson used variation in United States government military spending across states to estimate the government spending multiplier. Their results came back substantially higher than one, confirming the Keynesian prediction that fiscal stimulus can have substantial effects on economic output, particularly at the zero lower bound. The paper continues to be referenced in policy discussions.
Yes, the American Economic Association awarded Emi Nakamura the John Bates Clark Medal. Their citation credited her with having 'greatly increased our understanding of price-setting by firms and the effects of monetary and fiscal policies' and praised her 'creativity in suggesting new sources of data to address long-standing questions.'
Emi Nakamura graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in economics, completing a senior thesis titled 'An Economy with Monetary Business Cycles' under the supervision of Michael Woodford. She then earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2007 with a dissertation titled 'Price Adjustment, Pass-through and Monetary Policy,' supervised by Robert Barro and Ariel Pakes.
Emi Nakamura comes from a multigenerational family of economists: her grandfather was Guy Orcutt, and both of her parents, Alice Nakamura and Masao Nakamura, are economists. She is married to fellow economist Jón Steinsson, who is also her most frequent research collaborator.