The work-from-home revolution and the performance of cities

Steven Bond-Smith and Philip McCann
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Philip McCann: University of Manchester, Alliance Manchester Business School; The Productivity Institute, Manchester, United Kingdom

No 2022-6R, Working Papers from University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Abstract: In this paper we set out the relationships between the behavioural, technological and spatial changes in systems that allow for heterogeneous responses to workingfrom- home by different types of actors, and also identifies the channels via which such changes take place. Unlike all other papers on the subject, the analytical framework we propose centers explicitly on the role of frequency of commuting. In particular, we find that the optimal frequency of commuting is positively related to the opportunity costs of less-than-continuous face-to-face interaction and inversely related to the travel plus travel-time costs. The results also support recent empirical findings of a “donut effect†with greater growth in the suburbs and hinterlands around large cities, but also capture inter-city effects for the first time. Counterintuitively, the reduction in the frequency of commuting makes larger cities and their hinterlands more desirable places, in spite of longer commuting distances. Taken together, our results imply enhanced productivity of larger cities over smaller cities.

Keywords: Working-from-home; agglomeration economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2022-09, Revised 2022-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-tid, nep-tre and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://uhero.hawaii.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/UHEROwp2206R.pdf First version, 2022 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The work-from-home revolution and the performance of cities (2022)
Working Paper: The work-from-home revolution and the performance of cities (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hae:wpaper:2022-6r

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