IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp18631.html

The Value of Reliable Statistics

Author

Listed:
  • Bloom, Nicholas

    (Stanford University)

  • Groshen, Erica

    (Cornell University)

  • Hobbs, Duncan

    (American Enterprise Institute)

  • Strain, Michael

    (American Enterprise Institute)

Abstract

On August 1, 2025, President Trump fired the head of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and claimed that the agency’s data were “rigged.†In the aftermath, measures of economic policy uncertainty rose sharply, consistent with the idea that reduced trust in official data increases uncertainty for investors, businesses, and households. We use an event-study design to estimate the effect of the firing on policy uncertainty, and then map that increase in uncertainty into implied macroeconomic outcomes. This yields a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the marginal value of public trust in official statistics. Our baseline estimate implies that preserving trust in the integrity and quality of official statistics generates economic benefits of about $25 for every $1 spent on the agency’s budget.

Suggested Citation

  • Bloom, Nicholas & Groshen, Erica & Hobbs, Duncan & Strain, Michael, 2026. "The Value of Reliable Statistics," IZA Discussion Papers 18631, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18631
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp18631.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ben S. Bernanke, 1983. "Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Cyclical Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(1), pages 85-106.
    2. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    3. Ellen Hughes-Cromwick & Julia Coronado, 2019. "The Value of US Government Data to US Business Decisions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 131-146, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bonciani, Dario, 2015. "Estimating the effects of uncertainty over the business cycle," MPRA Paper 65921, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Idriss Fontaine, 2021. "Uncertainty and Labour Force Participation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(2), pages 437-471, April.
    3. Bonciani, Dario, 2014. "Uncertainty shocks: it's a matter of habit," MPRA Paper 59370, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Alessandri, Piergiorgio & Mumtaz, Haroon, 2019. "Financial regimes and uncertainty shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 31-46.
    5. Nicholas Bloom & Philip Bunn & Scarlet Chen & Paul Mizen & Pawel Smietanka & Gregory Thwaites, 2019. "The impact of Brexit on UK firms," Bank of England working papers 818, Bank of England.
    6. Chen, Cheng & Senga, Tatsuro & Sun, Chang & Zhang, Hongyong, 2023. "Uncertainty, imperfect information, and expectation formation over the firm’s life cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 60-77.
    7. Baker, Jessica & Carreras, Oriol & Kirby, Simon & Meaning, Jack & Piggott, Rebecca, 2016. "Modelling events: The short-term economic impact of leaving the EU," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 339-350.
    8. Buu Kiem Dang & Duc Toan Vo & Nguyen Tuyet Minh Ha, 2025. "The impact of economic uncertainty and institutional quality on bank profitability: global evidence," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 1-29, July.
    9. Nicholas Bloom, 2014. "Fluctuations in Uncertainty," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(2), pages 153-176, Spring.
    10. Azzimonti, Marina, 2019. "Does partisan conflict deter FDI inflows to the US?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 162-178.
    11. Yuan, Di & Li, Sufang & Li, Rong & Zhang, Feipeng, 2022. "Economic policy uncertainty, oil and stock markets in BRIC: Evidence from quantiles analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    12. Tung Nguyen & Dimitris Petmezas & Nikolaos Karampatsas, 2023. "Does Terrorism Affect Acquisitions?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(7), pages 4134-4168, July.
    13. Deniz AYTAÇ, 2023. "Global Economic Policy Uncertainty and Energy Prices: A Markov-Switching VAR Approach," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(3), pages 40-61, October.
    14. Baris Kocaarslan & Ugur Soytas, 2025. "How do the reserve currency and uncertainties in major markets affect the uncertainty of oil prices over time?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 2016-2041, April.
    15. Tarek A Hassan & Stephan Hollander & Laurence van Lent & Ahmed Tahoun, 2019. "Firm-Level Political Risk: Measurement and Effects," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(4), pages 2135-2202.
    16. Gao, Lin & Hitzemann, Steffen & Shaliastovich, Ivan & Xu, Lai, 2022. "Oil volatility risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 456-491.
    17. Magnus Reif, 2020. "Macroeconomics, Nonlinearities, and the Business Cycle," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 87, April.
    18. Ashton De Silva & Huu Nhan Duong & My Nguyen & Yen Ngoc Nguyen, 2023. "Bank risk in uncertain times: Do credit rationing and revenue diversification matter?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(7-8), pages 1240-1273, July.
    19. Himounet, Nicolas, 2022. "Searching the nature of uncertainty: Macroeconomic and financial risks VS geopolitical and pandemic risks," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 1-31.
    20. Carlos Cañizares Martínez & Arne Gieseck, 2025. "The effects of macro uncertainty shocks in the euro area: a FAVAR approach," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 68(6), pages 2829-2872, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • J00 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18631. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.