Nicholas A. Bloom

Professor of Economics (by courtesy)
Professor of Economics, School of Humanities and Sciences
Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Academic Area:
Nicholas A. Bloom

Bio

Nick Bloom is a professor in the department of economics and Professor, by courtesy, at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is also the co-director of the Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a fellow of the Centre for Economic Performance, and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Nick was an undergraduate in Cambridge, a master’s student at Oxford, and a PhD student at University College London. While completing his PhD he worked part-time at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a London based tax think-tank. After completing his PhD, Nick worked as a business tax policy advisor to the UK Treasury, and then joined McKinsey & Company as a management consultant. In 2003 he moved to the London School of Economics to focus on research, before joining Stanford University in 2005.

Professor Bloom’s research focuses on measuring and explaining management practices. He has been working with McKinsey & Company as part of a long-run effort to collect management data from over 10,000 firms across industries and countries. The aim is to build an empirical basis for understanding what factors drive differences in management practices across regions, industries and countries, and how this determines firm and national performance. More recently he has also been working with Accenture on running management experiments. He also works on understanding the impacts of large uncertainty shocks—such as the credit crunch, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Cuban Missile crisis — on the U.S. economy, for which he won the Frisch Medal in 2010.

Nick lives on Stanford campus with his wife and three children. As a born and bred Londoner, married to a Scottish wife, with kids attending U.S. schools, he lives in a multi-lingual English household.

Stanford GSB Affiliations

Academic Degrees

  • PhD, University College London, 2001
  • Masters of Philosophy, Oxford University, St. Peters College, 1996
  • BA, Cambridge University, Fitzwilliam College, 1994

Academic Appointments

  • At Stanford since 2005.

Research Statement

Nick Bloom’s research interests focus on measuring and explaining management practices across firms and countries. He has been collecting data from thousands of manufacturing firms, retailers, schools and hospitals across countries, to develop a quantitative basis for management research. Recently he has also been running management field experiments in India to identify clearly causal links between management and performance. A second area of research is on the causes and consequences of uncertainty, arising from events such as the credit crunch, the 9/11 terrorist attack and the Cuban Missile crisis. He also works on innovation and IT, examining factors that effect this such as tax, trade and regulation.

Journal Articles

Arjun Ramani, Joel Alcedo, Nicholas A. Bloom
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
October 2024 Vol. 121 Issue 45
Mengxiao Wang, Gordon Guo‐En Liu, Nicholas A. Bloom, Hanqing Zhao, Thomas Butt, Tianhao Gao, Jiaqi Xu, Xia Jin
International Journal of Health Planning & Management
May 2022 Vol. 37 Issue 3 Pages 1327–1339
David Altig, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas A. Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Brent Meyer, Nicholas Parker
Journal of Econometrics
2022 Vol. 231 Issue 1 Pages 282–303
Daniela Scur, Raffaella Sadun, John Van Reenen, Renata Lemos, Nicholas A. Bloom
Oxford Review of Economic Policy
June 2021 Vol. 37 Issue 2 Pages 231–258
Nicholas A. Bloom, Paul Romer, Stephen J. Terry, John Van Reenen
The Economic Journal
January 2021 Vol. 131 Issue 633 Pages 156–191
Nicholas A. Bloom, Kalina Manova, John Van Reenen, Stephen Teng Sun, Zhihong Yu
The Review of Economics and Statistics
2021 Vol. 103 Issue 3 Pages 443–460
Dave Altig, Scott R. Baker, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas A. Bloom, Philip Bunn, Scarlet Chen, Steven J. Davis, Julia Leather, Brent H. Meyer, Emil Mihaylov, Paul Mizen, Nicholas B. Parker, Thomas Renault, Pawel Smietanka , Greg Thwaites
Journal of Public Economics
November 2020 Vol. 191
Mari Tanaka, Nicholas A. Bloom, Joel M. David, Maiko Koga
Journal of Monetary Economics
October 2020 Vol. 114 Pages 26–41
Nicholas A. Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, John Van Reenen
Review of Economics & Statistics
July 2020 Vol. 102 Issue 3 Pages 506–517
Nicholas A. Bloom, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen, Michael Webb
American Economic Review
April 2020 Vol. 110 Issue 4 Pages 1104–1144
Nicholas A. Bloom, Erik Brynjolfsson, Lucia Foster, Ron Jarmin, Megha Patnaik, Itay Saporta-Eksten, John Van Reenen
American Economic Review
May 2019 Vol. 109 Issue 5 Pages 1648-1683
Jae Song, David J. Price, Faith Guvenen, Nicholas A. Bloom, Till von Wachter
The Quarterly Journal of Economics
February 1, 2019 Vol. 134 Issue 1 Pages 1-50
Nicholas A. Bloom
Journal of Economic Perspectives
2019 Vol. 33 Issue 3 Pages 163-184
Nicholas A. Bloom, Andre Kurmann, Kyle Handley, Philip Luck
Society for Economic Dynamics
2019
Nicholas A. Bloom, Philip Bunn, Scarlet Chen, Paul Mizen, Pawel Smietanka, Greg Thwaites, Gary Young
Fiscal Studies
December 2018 Vol. 39 Issue 4 Pages 555-580
Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, Harun Alp, Nicholas A. Bloom, William Kerr
American Economic Review
November 2018 Vol. 108 Issue 11 Pages 3450-3491
Nicholas A. Bloom, Max Floetotto, Nir Jaimovich, Itay Saporta-Eksten, Stephen Terry
Econometrica
May 25, 2018 Vol. 86 Issue 3
Stefan Bender, Nicholas A. Bloom, David Card, John Van Reenen, Stephanie Woter
Journal of Labor Economics
January 2018 Vol. 36 Issue 1 Pages 371-409
Nicholas A. Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Pawel Smietanka, Greg Thwaites
Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin
September 2017 Vol. 57 Issue 2 Pages 110-120
Raffaella Sadun, Nicholas A. Bloom, John Van Reenen
Harvard Business Review
September 2017 Vol. 95 Issue 5 Pages 120-127
Nicholas A. Bloom
Australian Economic Review
February 28, 2017 Vol. 50 Issue 1 Pages 79-84
Scott R. Baker, Nicholas A. Bloom, Steven J. Davis
The Quarterly Journal of Economics
July 11, 2016 Vol. 131 Issue 4 Pages 1593-1636
Nicholas A. Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur, John Van Reenen
American Economic Review
May 2016 Vol. 106 Issue 5 Pages 152-156
Nicholas A. Bloom, James Liang, John Roberts, Zhichun Jenny Ying
The Quarterly Journal of Economics
February 2015 Vol. 130 Issue 1 Pages 165–218
Stephan Seiler, Nicholas A. Bloom, Carol Propper, John Van Reenen
The Review of Economic Studies
January 2015 Vol. 82 Issue 2 Pages 457-489

Working Papers

Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas A. Bloom, Steven J. Davis April 21, 2021
Nicholas A. Bloom, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen, Michael Webb September 2017
Philippe Aghion, Nicholas A. Bloom, John Van Reenen February 2013

Other Publications

Nicholas A. Bloom, Scarlet Chen, Paul Mizen
Vox EU
November 16, 2018

Executive Education & Other Non-Degree Programs

​Bring effective team management and innovation to your company with actionable strategies, experiential team-based simulations, and design thinking.

Cases

Nicholas Bloom, John Van Reenen, Sheila Melvin
2013
Nicholas Bloom, John Van Reenen, Sheila Melvin
2013

Insights by Stanford Business

August 16, 2022
Dean says today’s business leaders have great opportunities to use modern technology for good while mitigating its harms.
June 03, 2021
Widespread working from home is here to stay, but its benefits are unevenly distributed.
April 02, 2021
A Stanford economist argues that Chinese competition sped up productivity and overall growth in the West.
March 19, 2021
An interview with Zoom’s CEO. A crisis-leadership playbook. A podcast on virtual presentations. And a word on how to close shop gracefully.
April 16, 2020
Nicholas Bloom’s research has measured the benefits of working from home. But in the current coronavirus crisis, the economist fears productivity will plummet.
April 02, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic may end this winter, but a longtime expert says the economic damage will be deep and could last for years.
November 22, 2019
Tariffs and trade policy uncertainty have had a chilling impact on business, a Stanford scholar says.
October 07, 2019
A new toolkit aims to teach governments about which policies are supported by research.
September 09, 2019
More than you might realize. Research finds management practices account for 20% of variation in productivity among certain firms.
January 30, 2019
A Stanford economist finds that Brexit is a top source of uncertainty for almost half of UK companies.
September 06, 2018
A Stanford economist says that populist politicians have become a major source of economic uncertainty.
December 04, 2017
Readers keyed into humor’s workplace value, the secret to improving communication skills, and advice from Sheryl Sandberg and Marc Andreessen.
September 25, 2017
Stanford economists show productivity has not matched increases in research and development.
June 22, 2017
A Stanford GSB expert shows how companies and employees benefit from workplace flexibility.
June 09, 2015
Why market forces in healthcare are good for patient care.
December 15, 2014
Learn more about risk and other related topics.
October 10, 2014
An economist explains how political polarization and government growth have increased uncertainty.
October 06, 2014
Research shows that flexibility wins in bad economic times.
August 18, 2014
An economics scholar examines ways firms create flexible structures and why some do not.
October 09, 2012
A study reveals that working from home boosts employee happiness and productivity.
May 09, 2012
A group of scholars, students, and business and nonprofit leaders say yes, but it requires "a thoughtful, systemic approach."
December 01, 2010
New studies show that firms implementing systematic management practices improved their productivity by 10 percent reduced defects by 60 percent.

School News

April 12, 2017
Can teaching better management skills improve the lives of workers?
January 09, 2017
Inside Stanford GSB’s ambitious venture to lift people out of poverty.
November 01, 2010
John Roberts' groundbreaking work in industrial organization affected the course of economic research and inspired a new generation of economists.