Results

CentrePiece article

Working from home in the public sector

Study finds workers work faster when they work from home...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Remote work can blunt the fertility decline

Fertility has fallen to very low levels in many advanced economies, and many pro-natalist policies appear to deliver only modest gains at a high cost. Using survey data from 38 countries, this article shows that both pla...Read more...

Journal article

International Economics:

Reassessing EU comparative advantage: the role of technology

Based on a sufficient statistics approach, we show how the state of technology of European industries relative to the rest of the world can be empirically assessed in a way that is simple in terms of computation, parsimo...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Paper tiger? Chinese science and home bias in citations

We investigate the phenomenon of home bias in scientific citations, where researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country. We develop a benchmark for expected citations based on the relative size of count...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Working from home boosted growth by expanding disability employment

Individuals with a disability have remarkably low employment rates compared to the rest of the population. This column examines whether the rapid rise in the ability to work from home post-pandemic has improved disabilit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paper tiger? Chinese science and home bias in citations

We investigate the phenomenon of home bias in scientific citations, where researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country. We develop a benchmark for expected citations based on the relative size of count...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

Why higher house prices lead to higher borrowing

In the past three decades, house prices and mortgage debt in the UK have risen much faster than income. In other words, people end up borrowing more money when house prices go up. This finding goes against many canonical...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Not incentivized yet efficient: working from home in the public sector

This paper studies whether working from home (WFH) affects workers' performance in public sector jobs. Studying public sector initiatives allows us to establish baseline estimates on the impact of WFH net of incentives. ...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Managers say working from home is here to stay

Krishan Shah, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites, and Ivan Yotzov analyse new firm-level data to explore future remote work trends. Managers expect 2028 remote work levels to mirror those of 2023, ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Population Economics:

Teleworking and life satisfaction during Covid-19: the importance of family structure

We carry out a difference-in-differences analysis of a real-time survey conducted as part of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) survey and show that teleworking had a negative average effect on life satisfaction over...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

A theory of falling growth and rising rents

Growth has fallen in the U.S. amid a rise in firm concentration. Market share has shifted to low labour share firms, while within-firm labour shares have actually risen. We propose a theory linking these trends in which ...Read more...

Blog

Hoover Institution:

Work from Home and Productivity - A Conversation with Nick Bloom (Podcast)

Steven Davis and Nick Bloom discuss the big shift to work from home, what it means for productivity, why perceptions in this regard often differ between managers and workers, and why - on balance - the big shift is a ble...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Should we call time on presenteeism?

Many companies have adopted a "remote first" approach for their workforce, but a growing number of firms are now demanding that employees work from the office most of the time. Jasmine Virhia and Grace Lordan warn firms ...Read more...

Blog

Financial Times:

Are Fridays dead? (podcast)

It's Friday afternoon in the city. There are office blocks all around and a restaurant or bar on every corner... so where is everyone? If occupancy and travel data are anything to go by, they're probably at home. Nick Bl...Read more...

Journal article

Information Technology & People:

Well-being and working from home during Covid-19

The authors track the well-being of individuals across five European countries during the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and relate their well-being to working from home. The authors also cons...Read more...

Journal article

Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics:

The role of telework for productivity during and post Covid-19

Motivated by the sudden adoption of telework in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the OECD Global Forum on Productivity (GFP) undertook an online survey among managers and workers in 25 countries about their experience ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How hybrid working from home works out

Hybrid working from home (WFH), whereby employees work a mix of days at home and at work each week, has become dominant for graduate employees in the US. This paper evaluates a randomized control trial on 1612 engineers,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Working from home around the world

The pandemic triggered a large, lasting shift to work from home (WFH). To study this shift, we survey full-time workers who finished primary school in 27 countries as of mid-2021 and early 2022. Our cross-country compari...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Long social distancing

Many working-age Americans say they will continue some forms of social distancing after the COVID-19 pandemic ends. We uncover this long social distancing phenomenon in our monthly Survey of Working Arrangements and Atti...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Commute time savings when working from home

The large shift to work from home during the Covid-19 pandemic reduced the amount of time that workers spend commuting. This column reports on a global survey of workers in 27 countries showing that working from home sav...Read more...

Journal article

Brookings Papers on Economic Activity:

Working from home around the world

The pandemic triggered a large, lasting shift to work from home (WFH). To study this shift, we survey full-time workers who finished primary school in twenty-seven countries as of mid-2021 and early 2022. Our cross-count...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Operations Management:

Working from home and firm resilience to the Covid-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted firms' operations. To cope with the crisis, many firms have allowed their employees to work from home (WFH). We examine whether a firm's WFH capacity has increased its resilience durin...Read more...

Blog

The Sutton Trust:

Gloomy prospects for social mobility in the pandemic era

Lee Elliot Major and Andrew Eyles explain how a gap in missed education between richer and poorer children was exacerbated by stark home learning divides and the likely consequences for social mobility....Read more...

External report

Social mobility: past, present and future

Andrew Eyles, Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin forecast that relative income mobility levels in the UK could fall by as much as 12%, driven by learning loss in schools....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How does working from home during Covid-19 affect what managers do? Evidence from time-use studies

We assess how the sudden and widespread shift to working from home during the pandemic impacted how managers allocate time throughout their working day. We analyze the results from an online time-use survey with data on ...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Teleworking is here to stay and may raise productivity if implemented appropriately

The pandemic triggered a surge in teleworking, raising questions about its persistence as well as its impact on firm performance and worker wellbeing. This column argues that teleworking is here to stay - for most worker...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Economists discuss the impact of working from home on productivity, job satisfaction, and women's career progression

The pandemic has led to a big shift to working from home among people in occupations where it is possible for the jobs or some part of them to be done remotely. There has been much debate about the extent to which such f...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Working from home and corporate real estate

As remote working became more common during Covid-19, Antonin Bergeaud, Jean Benoit Eymeoud, Thomas Garcia and Dorian Henricot examine how corporate real-estate market participants adjusted to the growth of teleworking i...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

'Potential capital', working from home, and economic resilience

Janice Eberly, Jonathan Haskel and Paul Mizen estimate the potential capital and labour saved through working from home that would otherwise have been lost during the Covid-19 pandemic....Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Quantifying the full impact of country-specific policies on trade flows

Rebecca Freeman, Mario Larch, Angelos Theodorakopoulos and Yoto Yotov propose a solution to issues measuring country-specific impact using structural gravity models - a popular way to analyse the impact of trade policie...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Comparing online to in-person meetings

Covid-19 resulted in a shift towards working from home. This column discusses the findings of a survey of over 2,000 UK working adults, which suggest that online meetings are more efficient for smaller gatherings of 2 to...Read more...

Journal article

Human-Computer Interaction:

How does working from home during Covid-19 affect what managers do? Evidence from time-use studies

In this research we explore the effects of the forced Work-from-home arrangement during the Covid-19 pandemic on managers. We assess how the sudden and widespread shift to working from home during the pandemic impacted h...Read more...

Journal article

International Economic Review:

Estimating border effects: the impact of spatial aggregation

Trade data are typically aggregated across space. In this article, we investigate the sensitivity of gravity estimation to spatial aggregation. We build a model in which micro regions are aggregated into macro regions. W...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

What are the local implications of working from home?

Helene Donnat summarises the discussion of the What Works Growth's fourth Economic Recovery workshop, which discussed working from home: whether the trend is likely to persist and how it will affect workers - both in off...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Covid-19 and structural change

Covid-19 has had a sizeable impact on where people work and how they shop. This column uses data from the Decision Maker Panel business survey of 3,000 UK firms to assess the longer-run impact. The pandemic is expected t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Internet access and its implications for productivity, inequality and resilience

About one-fifth of paid workdays will be supplied from home in the post-pandemic economy, and more than one-fourth on an earnings-weighted basis. In view of this projection, we consider some implications of home internet...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology:

Life satisfaction and the Human Development Index across the world

We use annual data on over 150 countries between 2005 and 2018 to look at the relationship between subjective well-being (both cognitive and affective) and the Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI appears to be more cl...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Work, care and gender during the Covid-19 crisis

We explore impacts of the pandemic crisis and associated restrictions to economic activity on paid and unpaid work for men and women in the UK. Using data from the Covid-19 supplement of Understanding Society, we find ev...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Studies:

Creative differences? Measuring creative economy employment in the United States and the UK

This paper compares the creative economies of the US and the UK regions and nations using high-quality administrative microdata spanning the period 2011?13. The creative industries are highly urbanized in both countries....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring and explaining management in schools: new approaches using public data

Why do some students learn more in some schools than others? One consideration receiving growing attention is school management. To study this, researchers need to be able to measure school management accurately and chea...Read more...

Journal article

China and World Economy:

Fiscal subsidy policy on home appliances: its effects on domestic consumption and exports in China

This paper evaluates the effects of the Home Appliances Going to the Countryside (HAGC) policy, a fiscal subsidy program implemented in China to boost private consumption of home appliances in rural areas from 2007 to 20...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economic incentives, home production and gender identity norms

We infer the role of gender identity norms from the reallocation of childcare across parents, following changes in their relative wages. By exploiting variation from a Swedish tax reform, we estimate the elasticity of su...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of World Business:

Emerging economy MNEs: how does home country munificence matter?

Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) from emerging economies (EEs) are establishing operations in advanced economies (AEs), apparently departing from traditional models of internationalization. We explore an under-explored d...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Enabled to Work: The Impact of Government Housing on Slum Dwellers in South Africa

This paper looks at the link between housing conditions and household income and labour market participation in South Africa. I use four waves of panel data from 2002-2009 on households that were originally living in inf...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Estimating border effects: the impact of spatial aggregation

Trade data are typically reported at the level of regions or countries and are therefore aggregates across space. In this paper, we investigate the sensitivity of standard gravity estimation to spatial aggregation. We bu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment

About 10% of US employees now regularly work from home (WFH), but there are concerns this can lead to ?shirking from home.? We report the results of a WFH experiment at CTrip, a 16,000-employee, NASDAQ-listed Chinese tra...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Working or shirking?

Over 10% of US employees now regularly work from home (WFH), but there is widespread skepticism over its impact highlighted by phrases like ?shirking from home?. We report the results of a WFH experiment at Ctrip, a 13,0...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Is the International Border Effect Larger than the Domestic Border Effect? Evidence from U.S. Trade

Many studies have found that international borders represent large barriers to trade. But how do international borders compare to domestic border barriers? We investigate international and domestic border barriers in a u...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Welfare Policy and the Distribution of Hours of Work

We examine the distribution of hours of work across industrial sectors in OECD countries. We find large disparities when sectors are divided into three groups: one that produces goods without home substitutes and two oth...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economic Geography: A Review of the Theoretical and Empirical Literature

This paper reviews the new economic geography literature, which accounts for the uneven distribution of economic activity across space in terms of a combination of love of variety preferences, increasing returns to scale...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Is Distance Dying at Last? Falling Home Bias in Fixed Effects Models of Patent Citations

We examine the ?home bias? of international knowledge spillovers as measured by the speed of patent citations (i.e. knowledge spreads slowly over international boundaries). We present the first compelling econometric evi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Effect of Information and Communication Technologies on Urban Structure

The geographic concentration of economic activity occurs because transport costs for goods, people and ideas give individuals and organisations incentives to locate close to each other. Historically, all of these costs h...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trends in Hours and Economic Growth

We study long-run trends in market hours of work and employment shifts across economic sectors driven by uneven TFP growth in market and home production. We focus on the structural transformation between agriculture, man...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Survival of the Best Fit: Exposure to Low-Wage Countries and the (Uneven) Growth of U.S. Manufacturing Plants

This paper examines the role of international trade in the reallocation of U.S. manufacturing activity within and across industries from 1977 to 1997. It introduces a new measure of industry exposure to international tra...Read more...