— Ch. 1 · The Princeton And Harvard Years —
Emi Nakamura.
~2 min read · Ch. 1 of 5
Emi Nakamura graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 2001. Her senior thesis carried the title An Economy with Monetary Business Cycles. Michael Woodford supervised her work during that undergraduate period. She then moved to Harvard University for graduate studies. There she earned a Ph.D. in economics in 2007. Her doctoral dissertation bore the name Price Adjustment, Pass-through and Monetary Policy. Robert Barro and Ariel Pakes served as her supervisors at Harvard. During her time as a graduate student she also worked as a teaching fellow.
Microdata And Price Stickiness
Nakamura and Jón Steinsson published their most cited paper Five facts about prices. They used microdata from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to analyze price changes. Their research showed many measured price changes resulted from temporary sales scheduled far in advance. These sales occurred before dynamic responses to economic conditions could take place. This finding suggested frequent price changes remained compatible with macroeconomic models featuring substantial price rigidity. Another highly cited work titled Fiscal stimulus in a monetary union examined United States government military spending across states. The authors estimated open-economy government spending multipliers using variation in that spending. They found values substantially higher than one. This confirmed Keynesian macroeconomic model predictions regarding fiscal stimulus effects on output.