Heterogeneous Impacts of Teleworking on Individuals

We study the impact of different intensities of working from home (WFH) on the economy, which produces (i) buildings for housing and production activities and (ii) differentiated consumption good using unskilled and skilled workers who differ in their ability to work from home. We study two scenarios, in which firms or workers choose work arrangements, and observe contrasted impacts on the economy as a whole as well as on firms, industries and workers. For instance, higher office productivity leads to less home workers and lower GDP if workers choose work arrangements. The opposite holds if firms are in charge of the work regime. Furthermore, if office workers are highly productive and/or home workers are sufficiently homogeneous, the number of home workers and GDP are higher if firms choose work arrangements than that of when workers choose. We finally investigate the firms' decisions on work arrangements when they do not observe individual home productivity but its distribution only. Under these circumstances, firms chose same share of WFH for each skilled. Moreover, firms increase the share of WFH for each skilled if skilled office productivity increases and/or average productivity at home decreases.