Luis M Linde: Profile of Professor Nicholas Bloom - winner of the
XII Germán Bernácer Prize
Opening remarks by Mr Luis M Linde, Governor of the Bank of Spain, at the XII Germán
Bernácer Prize Ceremony, Madrid, 24 September 2013.
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Ladies and Gentlemen
It is a great pleasure for me to introduce this award ceremony for the 12th Germán Bernácer
Prize.
First of all, let me once again thank the organizers and sponsors of the Prize. They have
established an excellent programme to support economic research in the fields of
macroeconomics, monetary policy, and financial economics.
This is the 10th time that the Bernácer Prize award ceremony has taken place at the Banco
de España. The continued support and backing of this initiative of the Observatory of the
European Central Bank by the Banco de España is justified by its conviction of the
importance of macroeconomic research, insofar as it concerns the functions to be performed
by the European System of Central Banks.
By recognizing the relevance of a prize like this, which has been awarded, in every instance,
on the basis of academic excellence, the Banco de España reaffirms its commitment to
economic research. As many of you know, this Prize commemorates a distinguished Spanish
macroeconomist who worked at the Banco de España, as director of its Research
Department, during the 1930s. Despite the isolation of the Spanish economics profession at
that time, Germán Bernácer obtained substantial international recognition for his research
contributions.
In this edition, to the very illustrious list of previous winners of the Germán Bernácer Prize,
we add, with all due merit, Professor Nicholas Bloom, a British economist, who is today
Professor in the Economics Department at Stanford University.
Professor Bloom graduated in Economics from Cambridge University, obtained his masters
at Oxford University and his Ph.D. at University College London. He has been awarded the
2010 Frisch Medal of the Econometric Society, is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences and an associate editor of, among other journals, Econometrica and the
Quarterly Journal of Economics and Management Science. He has published many articles
on economic and management issues in top journals, including the American Economic
Review, Econometrica and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Professor Bloom's two main areas of research are macroeconomic uncertainty and firm
organization and productivity. In the first area, his main contributions are to show that
macroeconomic uncertainty increases substantially in the aftermath of significant shocks. He
also shows that during these periods of uncertainty firm's investment responds less to
demand shocks. This set of contributions has promoted research that explores the
importance of variations in volatility to explain macroeconomic fluctuations and the decisions
of agents in the economy.
In the second area, firm organization and productivity, he shows that social capital,
represented by trust, increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms.
He also shows the implications of these organization techniques on the implementation of
Information and Telecommunication technologies across firms. In both cases, he is able to
capture the macroeconomic implications of decisions made at the firm level, linking micro
and macro questions.
I conclude by extending my congratulations to Professor Bloom.