Here, too, Nicholas Bloom, together with Scott Baker of Stanford University and Steven Davis of the University of Chicago, made an important contribution in developing an economic policy uncertainty index for the US, Europe and other major economies. The measure has been used not only in academic papers but also by investors and financial professionals.5 It has also been subject to intense discussions in the blogosphere in view of some of its political uses. The difficulties in finding good indicators controlled to avoid reverse causation and the use of political events provided fodder for the debates. Professor Bloom’s work on measuring uncertainty stimulated more systematic analysis of uncertainty indices also at the ECB. We developed our own composite uncertainty indicator which combines four components: systemic stress, uncertainty of private households and firms, political uncertainty and financial risk aversion. Measurement difficulties were also an issue Professor Bloom had to tackle in the second strand of his research, namely in his research on the role of management practices in driving productivity and growth differentials across companies and across countries. Due to an absence of good quality data on management practices, little prior research was conducted on this important topic. To address this gap in the literature, Nicholas Bloom, together with John Van Reenen of the London School of Economics, developed a methodology for quantifying management practices.
Vítor Constâncio: 2012 Bernácer prize award ceremony in honour of Nicholas Bloom Speech by Mr Vítor Constâncio, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, on the occasion of the Awarding Ceremony of the Germán Bernácer Prize for Promoting Economic Research in Europe to Nicholas Bloom, Madrid, 24 September 2013. *  *  *  I wish to thank Marie Hoerova for the help in preparing this text. Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a pleasure for me to be part of this session to award the 2012 Germán Bernácer Prize to Nicholas Bloom, Professor of Economics at Stanford University. Nicholas Bloom has made influential contributions to the academic debate in two broad areas, both of which are of great relevance for central bank policy-makers. First, his research on the effects of policy and economic uncertainty on business cycles helped us understand better some of the key contributing factors to the protracted slump in output during what has become known as the Great Recession. Second, his research on the determinants of good management practices at the firm level provided important insights on how to support long-term economic growth and competitiveness, including in the European context. The financial and economic crisis that started in the summer of 2007 brought about unprecedented challenges for central bank policy-makers. Some well-accepted paradigms and widely used models have come to be questioned. It is of course the fact of life that central bankers operate in an ever-changing and, to use one of the keywords from Professor Bloom’s research, uncertain world.