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Nicholas A. Bloom

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

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.

Bio

Nick Bloom is a Professor in the department of economics and Professor, by courtesy, at the 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 masters 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 US 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 US schools, he lives in a multi-lingual English household.

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.

Publications

Journal Articles

Nicholas A. Bloom, Carol Propper, Stephan Seiler, John Van Reenen. The Review of Economic Studies. January 2015, Vol. 82, Issue 2, Pages 457-489.

Working Papers

Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment
Nicholas A. Bloom, James Liang, John Roberts, Zhichun Jenny Ying, March 2013
Incomplete Contracts and the Internal Organization of Firms
Philippe Aghion, Nicholas A. Bloom, John Van Reenen, February 2013

Courses Taught

Degree Courses

2015-16

The course will review the results from a large management practices project involving Cambridge, Harvard, the London School of Economics, McKinsey & Company and Stanford. McKinsey have developed a basic management practice evaluation tool...

Stanford Case Studies

Gokaldas Exports (A): The Challenge of Change | SM213A
Nicholas Bloom, John Van Reenen, Sheila Melvin2013
Gokaldas Exports (B): Update | SM213B
Nicholas Bloom, John Van Reenen, Sheila Melvin2013

In the Media

Insights by Stanford Business

June 9, 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 6, 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 9, 2012
A study reveals that working from home boosts employee happiness and productivity.
May 9, 2012
A group of scholars, students, and business and nonprofit leaders say yes, but it requires "a thoughtful, systemic approach."
December 1, 2010
New studies show that firms implementing systematic management practices improved their productivity by 10 percent reduced defects by 60 percent.

School News

November 1, 2010
John Roberts' groundbreaking work in industrial organization affected the course of economic research and inspired a new generation of economists.