How working from home reshapes cities

Arjun Ramani (), Joel Alcedo and Nicholas Bloom
Additional contact information
Arjun Ramani: b Department of Economics, Stanford University , Stanford , CA 94305
Joel Alcedo: c Mastercard Economics Institute, Mastercard , Purchase , NY 10577

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024, vol. 121, issue 45, e2408930121

Abstract:

In recent decades, economic activity has become increasingly concentrated in major global metropolises. Yet, the rise of working from home threatens this dominance of cities. Using multiple high-frequency datasets on spending, commuting, migration, and housing, we provide global evidence that remote work has dispersed economic activity away from city centers. We label this the “Donut Effect,†which is much larger and more persistent in cities with high levels of remote work. Using detailed household microdata from the United States, we show that three-fifths of households that left city centers in big cities moved to the suburbs of the same city. This is likely explained by the rise of hybrid work, in which employees still commute to the office a few days a week. The enduring popularity of hybrid work into 2024 suggests that the Donut Effect will persist while also leaving broader metropolitan areas intact.

Keywords: cities; real estate; remote work; migration; consumer spending (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2408930121 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nas:journl:v:121:y:2024:p:e2408930121

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Eric Cain ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).