How do firms and workers respond to remote work?

: Evidence from European Union

Abstract

The impact that remote work has on productivity is a topic that reveals to be ambiguous in the existing literature, depending on the universe that is being considered, as well as the circumstances. Analyzing data at the country-level for 16 different European Union countries, with the use of country fixed effects to access what is, in fact, the impact that remote work has on productivity, our results indicate that working from home enhances productivity, both for workers and firms. However, with the fast increase in the percentage of people usually working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also took conclusions about the influence that these circumstances had on the effect that remote work has on productivity. Our results from both of our models show that this impact decreased during 2020 and 2021, years when there were strict lockdown periods for the population.

Date of Award	30 Jan 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ricardo Reis (Supervisor)