Brunt of Business Impact Yet to Come The windows of the Saks Fifth Avenue department store in Manhattan were boarded up Monday morning. From the mighty New York Stock Exchange to local restaurants and stores, businesses up and down the East Coast came to a halt Monday as the effects of Hurricane Sandy swept ashore. Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images A water bag protecting the entrance to a Starbucks store in Lower Manhattan on Monday. With New York City mass transit shut, many workers in the metropolitan area stayed close to their computers and smartphones and worked from home on Monday, even as a few brave souls ventured into the office. But the effects of the storm were expected to be felt by the economy well after Hurricane Sandy comes and goes, as consumers stay home and focus on cleanup and recovery. Besides the halt in both electronic and floor trading in virtually all Wall Street financial markets Monday, several prominent companies also delayed scheduled announcements. Pfizer, the big drug maker, put off its third-quarter earnings report until Thursday, while Thomson Reuters and NRG Energy delayed their reports until Friday. Google was forced to cancel Monday's event to unveil a new smartphone, the Nexus 4, as well as several new tablets, all aimed at the holiday shopping season. Facebook also called off an event, showcasing its new Facebook Gifts platform, that had been set to take place at F. A. O. Schwarz in Manhattan on Thursday. The business effects of the storm only added to the uncertainty pervading markets, economists said, with investors and executives already worried by the impending "fiscal cliff" in Washington as well as continuing economic problems in Europe and slowing growth in Asia. For now, economists were playing down the long-term impact from the storm, even if it results in billions of dollars in property damage from the high winds and lashing rain. In the short term, however, powerful storms disrupt consumer spending and can cause sharp month-to-month swings in economic data, said Christopher D. Carroll, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University who has analyzed the impact of weather events for the Federal Reserve. "It is something that serious analysts pay attention to, and you can find evidence that it does have an impact on the monthly data," Mr. Carroll said. Eventually, most spending or other activity is simply pushed forward, a phenomenon known in economics as intertemporal substitution. For example, since the New York Stock Exchange is closed on Monday and, as seems likely, on Tuesday, volume will probably rise on Wednesday and Thursday when trading resumes. The most powerful hurricanes that come along once or twice a decade - like Katrina or Andrew - can actually boost economic growth in the short-term, since the value of what is rebuilt is often more than that is replaced. "It's a problematic aspect of economics," said Mr. Carroll. If there's a lot of damage and stuff gets destroyed, like in Katrina, that doesn't show up in the calculation of gross domestic product. However, the rebuilt house does.