Alessandra Fenizia and Tom Kirchmaier
Abstract: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.
Exploiting novel administrative data and plausibly exogenous variation in work location,
we find that WFH increases productivity by 12%. These productivity gains
are primarily driven by reduced distractions. They are not explained by differences in
quality, shift length, absenteeism, characteristics of reported cases, training, administrative
duties, or task allocation. Importantly, productivity gains nearly double when
tasks are assigned by the supervisor.
Keywords: working from home, productivity, public sector.
JEL: D23, J45, L23, M54.