Nicholas Bloom awarded Guggenheim Fellowship
Nicholas Bloom, the William D. Eberle Professor of Economics in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), has been awarded a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship, a prestigious honor that recognizes mid-career scholars, artists, and scientists who have demonstrated a previous capacity for outstanding work and continue to show exceptional promise.
Bloom was one of five Stanford scholars in the 2022 class of Guggenheim Fellows — a group of 180 recipients honored across 51 fields. The other fellows from Stanford this year were Patricia Alessandrini, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Vera Gribanova, and Fred Turner.
Bloom has been researching working from home for nearly 20 years and has consulted with hundreds of CEOs and managers. As the COVID-19 pandemic upended working conditions, Bloom has researched the implications of hybrid work and its effects on firms, on cities, and the economy. He also co-founded a work-from-home website — a resource for up-to-date data on matters related to remote work.
Upon learning he’d received the award, Bloom said, “It was incredible to receive a Guggenheim fellowship, which fittingly I found out while working from home. The pandemic has led to an explosion of interest into remote work. But many firms and organizations are struggling to figure out how to make this work for them and all their employees. Politicians are also evaluating ways to support and regulate working from home while addressing some of the challenges it presents to the development of big cities.”
As a fellow, Bloom plans to continue his research on remote work.
“The next few years are hugely exciting in terms of seizing the opportunities that work from home allows, and also addressing the challenges. I hope my Guggenheim research, which focuses on data collection and measurement, can help to guide this process to benefit all of us,” Bloom said.
Bloom, also a professor, by courtesy, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, is the co-director of the Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a fellow of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.
Bloom’s extensive body of research also focuses on economic uncertainty and management practices for manufacturing firms, retailers, schools, and hospitals. His projects include running management field experiments in India to identify links between management and performance; developing quantitative research measures; and examining the causes and consequences of uncertainty arising from major events, such as the 9/11 terrorist attack. He also studies factors that can influence innovation and IT, such as tax, trade, and regulation.
A version of this story was originally published April 19, 2022 by Stanford News.