Report
Working Remotely? Selection, Treatment, and the Market for Remote Work
Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, Vol.no. 1061
Federal Reserve bank of New York
05/2023
Abstract
How does remote work affect productivity and how productive are workers who choose remote jobs? We estimate both effects in a U.S. Fortune 500 firm’s call centers that employed both remote and on-site workers in the same jobs. Prior to COVID-19, remote workers answered 12 percent fewer calls per hour than on-site workers. When the call centers closed due to COVID-19, the productivity of formerly on-site workers declined by 4 percent relative to already-remote workers, indicating that a third of the initial gap was due to a negative treatment effect of remote work. Yet an 8 percent productivity gap persisted, indicating that the majority of the productivity gap was due to negative worker selection into remote work. Difference-in-differences designs also indicate that remote work degraded call quality—
particularly for inexperienced workers—and reduced workers’ promotion rates. In a model of the market provision of remote work, we find that firms were in a prisoner’s dilemma: all firms would have gained from offering comparable remote and on-site jobs, but any individual firm was loathe to attract less productive workers.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Working Remotely? Selection, Treatment, and the Market for Remote Work
- Creators
- Natalia Emanuel - Federal Reserve Bank of New YorkEmma Harrington - University of Iowa, Law Faculty
- Resource Type
- Report
- Publication Details
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, Vol.no. 1061
- Publisher
- Federal Reserve bank of New York
- Number of pages
- 95 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2023 the authors
- Comment
- This paper presents preliminary findings and is being distributed to economists and other interested readers solely to stimulate discussion and elicit comments. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the author(s).
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 05/2023
- Academic Unit
- Law Faculty
- Record Identifier
- 9984701150702771
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