The Impact of Telework on Local Consumption: Evidence from Mobile Phone and Transaction Data

Gabrielle Gambuli (), David Bounie (), Chloé Breton and Étienne Côme ()
Additional contact information
Gabrielle Gambuli: Télécom Paris - IMT - Institut Mines-Télécom [Paris] - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris
David Bounie: IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris, CREST - Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique - ENSAI - Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information [Bruz] - Groupe ENSAE-ENSAI - Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique - X - École polytechnique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - ENSAE Paris - École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique - Groupe ENSAE-ENSAI - Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Chloé Breton: Télécom Paris - IMT - Institut Mines-Télécom [Paris] - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris
Étienne Côme: COSYS-GRETTIA - Génie des Réseaux de Transport Terrestres et Informatique Avancée - Université Gustave Eiffel

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: While prior studies have examined how telework affects consumer spending either near residences or workplaces separately, its net economic effect, and whether it reduces or merely redistributes local demand, remains debated. Using high-frequency mobile phone and card transaction data from Lyon, France's second-largest metropolitan area, we causally identify dual demand shocks: a 1pp increase in working-from-home raises local spending by 1%, while a 1pp increase in workplace absence reduces it by 1.3%. Aggregating these opposing shocks yields a small, statistically insignificant decline in weekday offline consumption, consistent with near-complete substitution of spending from workplace to home but a sharp decline in transaction frequency. This reflects a spatial shift from urban cores to residential suburbs and a sectoral reallocation from restaurants to food retail and bars.

Keywords: Work from home; Consumer mobility; Economic geography; Card transaction data; Mobile phone data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04-08
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05584645v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-05584645v1/document (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:hal:wpaper:hal-05584645

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().