Results for “nakamura” 23 found
Emi Nakamura, 2019 John Bates Clark award winner
From a new JEP appreciation by Janice Eberly and Michael Woodford:
Emi’s exposure to economics began early in life. Her grandfather, Guy Orcutt, was a distinguished econometrician (Watts 1991). Both of her parents, Alice and Masao Nakamura, were academic economists; her mother, Alice Orcutt Naka-mura, is a past President of the Canadian Economic Association. In addition to an early exposure to economic ideas, Emi credits her parents with instilling in her “a deep sense of the importance of testing theories empirically” (Ng 2015). Emi attended academic conferences with her mother and began taking economics classes at the University of British Columbia as a high school student. She credits one of these early classes, a master’s class on economic measurement and index number theory taught by Erwin Diewert, with making an early mark in her drive for clarity in measurement. In a similar vein, Emi watched the film “The Race for the Double Helix” about the discovery of the structure of DNA with her parents. They emphasized the role of the empiricist Rosalind Franklin and the notion that “there is nothing worse than a wrong fact.”
Perhaps one lesson here is the importance of mobilizing talent from very early ages. Here is previous MR coverage of Emi Nakamura.
Emi Nakamura of Berkeley wins the John Bates Clark award
Here is the announcement, here is the opening paragraph of the summary:
Emi Nakamura is an empirical macroeconomist who has greatly increased our understanding of price-setting by firms and the effects of monetary and fiscal policies. Emi’s distinctive approach is notable for its creativity in suggesting new sources of data to address long-standing questions in macroeconomics. The datasets she uses are more disaggregated, or higher-frequency, or extending over a longer historical period, than the postwar, quarterly, aggregate time series that have been the basis for most prior work on these topics in empirical macroeconomics. Her work has required painstaking analysis of data sources not previously exploited, and at the same time displays a sophisticated understanding of the alternative theoretical models that the data can be used to distinguish.
Congratulations! And there is much more of interest at the link. And here are previous (and numerous) MR posts on her work.
The game theory of the final round of the Candidates
The amazing Gukesh (17 years old!) is half a point ahead with one round remaining today. Three players — Nakamura, Caruana, and Nepo — trail him by half a point. Naka is playing Gukesh, and of course Naka will try to win. But what about Caruana vs. Nepo? Yes, each must try to win (no real reward for second place), but which openings should they aim for? You might think they both will steer the game in the direction of freewheeling, risky openings. Game theory, however, points one’s attention in a different direction. What if one of the two players opts for something truly drawish, say like the Petroff or (these days) the Berlin, or the Slav exchange variation? Then the other player really needs to try to win, and to take some crazy chances in what is otherwise a quite even position. Why not precommit to “drawish,” knowing the other player will have to go to extreme lengths to rebel against that?
Of course game theory probably is wrong in this case, but is this such a crazy notion? I’ll guess we’ll find out at about 2:45 EST today.
Friday assorted links
Wednesday assorted links
1. Is Germany really with the program? (NYT) I liked this sentence: ““The government has made some courageous decisions, but it can seem afraid of its own courage.”
2. New Yorker profile of Nakamura.
3. Did Yves Klein sell the very first NFT?
4. Jason Furman on “running labor markets hot” — don’t expect higher real wages! (WSJ), #Thegreatforgetting
5. Complete works of Voltaire now available in 205 volumes.
6. The neurodiverse, work from home, and cybersecurity (WSJ).
Monday assorted links
1. “Amid escalating concern over global access to Covid-19 vaccines, BioNTech (BNTX) disclosed details about its plans to boost production in Africa. But the effort was met with a mixed reaction because the approach snubs a parallel effort by the World Health Organization.” No need to even click on the link, really (plus it is gated).
2. New study of the English Enclosures.
3. Maybe he should be on Metaculus? And good Ulrich Speck thread on Putin and Ukraine. Speck’s view is very close to my own.
5. Does the marshmallow test replicate?
6. Very good Noah Smith interview with Emi Nakamura on macro.
Further evidence that mobility shocks are positive
This time the work is from Emi Nakamura, Jósef Sigurdsson, Jón Steinsson, in the Review of Economic Studies:
We exploit a volcanic “experiment” to study the costs and benefits of geographic mobility. In our experiment, a third of the houses in a town were covered by lava. People living in these houses were much more likely to move away permanently. For the dependents in a household (children), our estimates suggest that being induced to move by the “lava shock” dramatically raised lifetime earnings and education. While large, these estimates come with a substantial amount of statistical uncertainty. The benefits of moving were very unequally distributed across generations: the household heads (parents) were made slightly worse off by the shock. These results suggest large barriers to moving for the children, which imply that labour does not flow to locations where it earns the highest returns. The large gains from moving for the young are surprising in light of the fact that the town affected by our volcanic experiment was (and is) a relatively high income town. We interpret our findings as evidence of the importance of comparative advantage: the gains to moving may be very large for those badly matched to the location they happened to be born in, even if differences in average income are small.
And here are some earlier mobility results related to Hurricane Katrina, another exogenous shock that forced many people out. Make that change in your life! Now!
Via Paul Novosad.
Jonathan Hazell emails me about inflation indicators
You asked Mark Carney what the best indicators were for inflation. Let me take the liberty of giving you mine.
1) Median CPI inflation, i.e. the weighted median value of CPI inflation across products. This measure tracks the underlying signal in inflation because it filters out volatile shocks hitting certain industries (e.g. airlines or used cars now, healthcare during 2010-2015, food and energy perennially). Median CPI has a good time series correlation with unemployment, better than the other series (see Ball & Mazumder, JMCB 2019).
2) 5 year, 5 year forward expected inflation. This is what markets expect inflation will be, in 5 years’ time, for the next 5 years. This measure tracks long run inflation expectations and removes the effects of short run shocks. In US data, big changes in inflation have been caused by unanchored long run inflation expectations, not by short run shocks to demand (see e.g. Hazell, Herreno, Nakamura & Steinsson 2021). So, if inflation is going to rise by a lot, long run inflation expectations are a good leading indicator.
For now, neither measure is high by historical standards but of course that could change. I hope some of this is interesting, anyway.
Noah Smith on the new macro wars
The most interesting thing about the new Macro Wars is that academic research is almost a total non-factor. In 2011 we were arguing about the Zero Lower Bound, DSGE models versus reduced-form models, etc. Now, though academics are involved in the debates, you rarely see an actual paper invoked. And when it is, it’s nearly always an empirical paper rather than a theory paper.
Why? If academics themselves weren’t involved in the debates, you could say that OK, maybe these people are just ignorant of the literature. But academics are involved, and they do know the literature; they’re just not invoking it much. Also, it’s not that Twitter econ debates are lightweight or short on references — the minimum wage debate, for example, cites papers constantly.
You can come up with various hypotheses for this, but it seems fairly clear to me that the reason is that everyone quietly stopped believing in the usefulness of academic macro theory. Macro profs are still out there doing their jobs, writing theory papers, and getting paid handsomely for it — in fact, I’d argue that with folks like Emi Nakamura, Jon Steinsson, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and Ivan Werning on the job, the field of macro theory is chock full of top talent. And those are good people who take their jobs seriously and aren’t out to push political narratives.
But the problem is that macro theory is just really, really hard.
His whole Substack post is very good, though I give the entire matter a different interpretation. I do not view contemporary macroeconomics as wonderfully predictive, but it does put constraints on what you can advocate or for that matter on what you can predict. I saw the Republicans go down this path some time ago, and now the Democrats are following them — it ain’t pretty. I think what we are seeing now is that (some, not all) Democratic economists want Democrats to be popular, and to win, and so they will rearrange macroeconomic thinking accordingly. David Henderson, in a recent post, put the point well:
Notice what even Krugman admits. First, that the aid to state and local governments is too much, even by his standards. Second, the checks to people who hadn’t suffered much, which are a huge part of the package, are the “least-justifiable piece in terms of standard economics.” And what’s Krugman’s justification for those payments? That they are “by far the most popular” and, for that reason, we can’t “entirely disregard that.”
On the actual analytics of this debate, Summers has been a clear winner, and that simply hasn’t mattered much at all. See also this excellent comment by Karl Smith:
Bidenism is hitting at exactly the right time politically. It’s not pushing the American people but meeting them where they are. It is quite frankly the coherent manifestation of MAGAism in the same way that Reaganism was a coherent manifestation of Carter-era deregulation
Ongoing…
When Did Growth Begin?
The subtitle of the paper is “New Estimates of Productivity Growth in England from 1250 to 1870” and it is by Paul Bouscasse, Emi Nakamura, and Jon Steinsson:
We provide new estimates of the evolution of productivity in England from 1250 to 1870. Real wages over this period were heavily influenced by plague-induced swings in the population. We develop and implement a new methodology for estimating productivity that accounts for these Malthusian dynamics. In the early part of our sample, we find that productivity growth was zero. Productivity growth began in 1600—almost a century before the Glorious Revolution. Post-1600 productivity growth had two phases: an initial phase of modest growth of 4% per decade between 1600 and 1810, followed by a rapid acceleration at the time of the Industrial Revolution to 18% per decade. Our evidence helps distinguish between theories of why growth began. In particular, our findings support the idea that broad-based economic change preceded the bourgeois institutional reforms of 17th century England and may have contributed to causing them. We also estimate the strength of Malthusian population forces on real wages. We find that these forces were sufficiently weak to be easily overwhelmed by post-1800 productivity growth.
Via Anton Howes. Here is a related tweet storm from Steinsson.
Ola Malm on the future and industrial organization of chess
It was great to see your “Thursday assorted links” link regarding chess. It has been fascinating to follow the recent online boom to which the game has been subject and to think about what it may mean for the organization, and business, of chess over time.
I speculate, of course, but – as to what the future holds – I believe at least one possible path for the sport runs as follows:
1. The three major chess-focused online platforms (chess.com, lichess, and chess24) reduces to one through a self-reinforcing cycle of greater revenue concentration, the attainment by one party of progressive technical superiority, and the increasing convergence of the chess-playing public on a single provider.
2. The market leader signs exclusivity agreements (governing non-FIDE play) with a significant portion of top players and becomes the de-facto organizer of most commercially significant tournaments. In contrast to (1), this could conceivably happen quite quickly, as it involves only a limited set of individuals.
3. The centralization of elite-level play on a single platform enables that platform’s Elo rating to emerge as the chess world’s most important manifestation of achievement, thus furthering the leading provider’s competitive position (and affording it, through subscription fees, the financial means of accelerating (1) and of maintaining (2)).
4. FIDE’s tight grip on the sport is somewhat loosened, and the organization reverts to being something more akin to what it used to be and was originally intended to be – a (gentler) gentlemen’s club (in the English, rather than the American-English, sense of the term) focused on advancing the sport of chess.
Step (2) is, to a certain extent, already underway in the form of Nakamura’s link with chess.com and Carlsen’s ownership interest in Play Magnus (which owns chess24 and hosts the Champions Chess Tour). Attempting to negotiate individual agreements with single players would very likely turn out no easier than herding cats (and a rather resourceful and independent sort of cat, at that); rather, I believe whichever party may seek to implement a form of player exclusivity would find it easier to, on a unilateral basis, simply issue rating-based cash compensation (in exchange for promises of exclusivity) to the top-10-ranked (or top-50-ranked – the precise number is of course unimportant) Grandmasters. To rate players, the provider could adopt the current FIDE ranking as its starting position, but thereafter “fork” it (much like an open-source piece of code is forked) and base future rankings (for payment purposes) exclusively on play on its own platform (to enable (3)).
Some would no doubt scoff at such a development as unwelcome commercialization. And, yet, I think it would constitute a step, if not indisputably forward, certainly not backward, for chess. International sports tend to be organized in one of two ways: through one-nation-one-vote Swiss associations (such as soccer’s FIFA); or through commercial corporations (such Formula1’s Liberty Media). Time has undeniably imbued governing bodies in the former category with a certain cachet, but it has also made many of them inefficient and corrupt, as their governance systems – designed for a pre-WWI European world of volunteerism and gentlemanly conduct – have failed to adapt to, and to ward off, an extent of contemporary cynicism. If the Guardian is to be believed, FIDE has not been entirely spared: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jun/03/chess-rights-multimillionaire-model-agency-owner-david-kaplan; https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jun/03/chess-fide-president-offshore-firms-rights-kirsan-ilyumzhinov. I think most sports, including chess, would be no worse managed – in the sense of attracting both a broad player base as well as a vibrant elite tier – were they to convalesce around corporate organizations rather than Swiss associations.
I am pleased to report that Ola was an earlier Emergent Ventures recipient.
Covid travel markets in everything
EVA Airways, one of the largest carriers in Taiwan, is partnering with travel experience company Mobius on a campaign called “Fly! Love is in the Air.” These are flights for singles on Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year Day.
“Because of Covid-19, EVA Air has been organizing “faux travel” experiences to fulfill people’s desire for travel. When single men and women travel, apart from enjoying the fun in travel, they may wish to meet someone — like a scene in a romantic movie,” Chiang Tsung-Wei, the spokesperson for You and Me, the speed dating arm of Mobius, tells CNN Travel.
Each of the dating experiences includes a three-hour flight that departs from Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport and circles the airspace above Taiwan, plus another two hours of a romantic date back on land.
Participants are encouraged to have in-depth conversations with each other on board while sampling meals prepared by Michelin-starred chef Motoke Nakamura. They are also encouraged to keep masks on when they’re not eating or drinking.
Here is the full story, via Air Genius Gary Leff.
Wednesday assorted links
2. Nakamura’s life and income.
3. Where are the Covid deaths in Europe? Some people had been wondering. And cross-immunities from Asian history? And using wearables to detect pre-symptomatic Covid? And Dolly Parton Fast Grants. And more on Dolly. And “Hospitalizations are rising faster in Sweden than any other European country…”
4. Why do Chinese liberals support Washington conservatives? (NYT, excellent piece once you inject the Straussian reading; note the fear that liberalism will be redefined in the direction of Hayek).
5. FDA authorizes 30-minute at-home Covid test, supposedly to sell for $50, crazy though to still require a prescription (NYT).
Tuesday assorted links
1. Brazzaville. Photos.
2. MIE: Monetizing the physiological data of squash players. And the market doesn’t like it when journalists are killed.
3. Why Karachi floods. And why are so many in Karachi asymptomatic?
4. You can’t call them neurotics if all of them are.
5. NYT covers Nakamura playing blitz chess on Twitch. And coverage from The Conversation. Magnus is number one anyway, so it is Nakamura who is the big winner from this new regime, and Caruana — who is now “just another very good player” — who is the big loser.
6. For better or worse, those “Big Pharma” companies do not seem to have pledged anything concrete about not accelerating Phase 3 for their vaccine trials. It is amazing how gullible the intelligent world has become, if only a story makes them feel more intelligent, especially relative to you-know-who.
The greatest gaming performance ever?
Or is chess a sport?
First Magnus Carlsen “privatizes” chess competition, naming the major tournament after himself, setting all of the rules, and becoming the residual claimant on the income stream.
He reshapes the entire format into a seven set, four months-long series of shorter tournaments, consisting of multiple games per day, 15 minutes per player per game, with increment. It seems most chess fans find this new format far more exciting and watchable than the last two world championship matches, which have featured 22 slow draws and only two decisive games (with the title decided by rapid tiebreakers in each case — why not just head to the rapids?).
Magnus won all but one of the “sets” or mini-tournaments, along the way regularly dispatching the game’s top players at an astonishing pace, often tossing them aside like mere rag dolls. Even the #2 and #3 rated players — Caruana and Ding Liren — stood little chance against his onslaught. Carlsen kept on winning these mini-tournaments against fields of ten players, typically all at a world class level.
A Final Four then led to a 38-game, seven-day showdown between Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, not decided until the very last set of moves yesterday. Note that at the more rapid pace Nakamura may well be a better player than Carlsen and is perhaps the only real challenge to him (at slower classical speeds Nakamura would be in the top twenty but is not at the very top of the rankings).
Nonetheless Carlsen prevailed. Nakamura had the upper hand in terms of initiative, but in the final five-minute tie-breaking round, Carlsen needed to pull out 1.5 of the last 2 points, which indeed he did. He drew by constructing an impregnable fortress against Nakamura’s Queen, and in the final “sudden death Armageddon” round a draw is equivalent to a victory for Black.
Along the way, at the same time, Magnus participated in Fantasy Football, competing against millions, at times holding the #1 slot and finishing #11 in what is a very competitive and demanding endeavor.