Emi Nakamura is the 2019 recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, widely considered to be one of the most prestigious prizes in the economic sciences. The annual award, presented by the American Economic Association, is given to an American economist who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. Dr. Nakamura is the fourth woman to win the medal since its establishment in 1947.
Currently, Dr. Nakamura serves as a Chancellor’s Professor of Economics and as a faculty affiliate with the Clausen Center for International Business and Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. She joined the faculty at the university in 2018 after serving 10 years on the business and economics faculty at Columbia University in New York City. Her research seeks to expand the types of data and empirical methods used in macroeconomics to answer big societal questions and to measure the effects of monetary and fiscal policy on the economy.
Outside of her faculty duties, Dr. Nakamura serves as co-editor of the American Economic Review. She has held previous editorial roles with the Review of Economic Studies, Economica, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Earlier this year she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. D. Nakamura is also a research associate with the National Buerau of Economic Research and serves as co-director of the NBER’s Monetary Economics program.
“I see this award not only as a recognition of the specific work we have done, but also as a recognition of the growth of applied research in macroeconomics, using new sources of data and empirical methods and combining them with macroeconomic models,” said Dr. Nakamura.
Dr. Nakamura is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University where she majored in economics. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. both in economics from Harvard University.