Alice Nakamura
Alice Orcutt Nakamura (born 1945) is an American-Canadian economist and writer. She is a fellow of the Canadian Economics Association, which is the highest honour of the association. She is currently a professor of finance and management science at the University of Alberta where she has taught since 1972. Alice Nakamura was also the first female president of the Canadian Economics Association in 1994–1995. She was also the president of the International Association for Research on Income and Wealth from 2014 to 2016. She is married to Masao Nakamura (current professor at the University of British Columbia) and is the mother of Emi Nakamura (current professor at the University of California, Berkeley). Alice Nakamura is also the daughter of economist Guy Orcutt, and the sister of economist Harriet Orcutt Duleep. Education and work Alice Nakamura obtained her Bachelor of Science in Economics with a minor in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1973. She pursued her Ph.D. in Economics with a doctoral minor in Sociology from Johns Hopkins University in 1973. Today, she is best known for her focus on labour economics, quality management, official statistics, and genomic statistics. She also focuses much of her research on productivity and price measurement, employment, employment earnings and compensation policies as well as social policies and taxation, economic methodology and microanalytic simulation. Some of her most recent works include "Sourcing Substitution and Related Price Index Biases" wherein she alongside Erwin Diewert, John Greenlees, Leonard Nakamura and Marshall Reinsdorf explains how price indexes have become increasingly biased in business settings, "The impact of upstream firms' waste output on downstream firms' performance in Japan" wherein she (alongside Hitoshi Hayami and Masao Nakamura) uses input-output analysis to determine levels of waste materials of the Japanese manufacturing industries, and "Building the Innovation Union: Lessons from the 2008 Financial Crisis" wherein Nakamura (with Leonard Nakamura and Masao Nakamura) uses examples from the Great Depression and the 2008 Financial Crisis to argue that it is necessary to extend the EU efforts of innovation for tangible goods to innovation for processes and regulatory processes. Scholarship Alice Nakamura has written and edited 14 books and journal issues and is the author of 82 refereed articles and book chapters. She was also the first woman to publish in the American Economic Review (the second undergraduate student, after Robert Heibroner’s first publication over 25 years prior). Alice Nakamura writes many of her works in cooperation with her husband, Masao Nakamura. "Difficulties Assessing Multifactor Productivity for Canada" (2012) In 2012, Alice Nakamura collaborated with some colleagues from the University of Alberta to assess data produced by Statistics Canada. Together with Michael Harper and Lu Zhang, Alice Nakamura investigates why Canada’s Mutlifactor Productivity Index (MPF) which is estimated by Statistics Canada was lower in 2011 than in 1977 (94.8 and 97.6 respectively) although many policies were introduced to improve Canada’s productivity. Together with other economists, Nakamura argues that the MPF estimated by Statistics Canada is reflective of the nations’ actual productivity. They contend