Working from Home and Consumption in Cities

Jean-Victor Alipour (alipour@ifo.de), Oliver Falck, Simon Krause, Carla Krolage and Sebastian Wichert

No 10000, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We estimate the impact of the Covid-induced shift to working from home (WFH) on offline consumer spending within 50 German metropolitan areas (MAs). We build a postcode-level panel (2019–2023) of cellphone mobility patterns and local card transaction volumes. The identifying variation comes from local differences in WFH potential: the fraction of residents with a teleworkable job. Difference-in-differences estimates show that higher WFH potential is associated with persistent morning-mobility declines and spending increases. We estimate an elasticity of spending with respect to WFH-induced mobility changes of -3.7%, driven by large MAs. Neither firm turnover nor WFH-induced migration can explain the results.

Keywords: remote work; consumer spending; urban agglomerations; cities; spatial analysis; cellphone mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 E20 G20 J00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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