Germany's Capacities to Work from Home

Jean-Victor Alipour (), Oliver Falck and Simone Schüller
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Jean-Victor Alipour: Ifo Institute for Economic Research

No 13152, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Due to the COVID-19 crisis and the related "social distancing" measures, working from home (WfH) has suddenly become a crucial lever of economic activity. This paper combines survey and administrative data to compute measures for the feasibility of working from home among German employees. Breaking down the data by occupation, region, industry, and employee characteristics, we document considerable variation in the potential to WfH across all dimensions. We find that WfH is feasible for roughly 56 percent of the overall German workforce, while less than half of this potential was exploited in the pre-pandemic economy.

Keywords: Germany; working from home; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 J22 J24 O33 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2020-04
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (68)

Published - revised version published in: European Economic Review , 2023, 151,104354

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