IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nse/ecosta/ecostat_2023_539_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Telework and Productivity Before, During and After the COVID‑19 Crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Antonin Bergeaud
  • Gilbert Cette
  • Simon Drapala

Abstract

[eng] We use the data from a Banque de France survey, carried out among French companies about their use of telework in 2019 and during the first lockdown in the spring of 2020. Combining this with detailed information regarding their balance sheets and profit and loss accounts, we show that those that made more use of telework in 2019 were more productive on average and better withstood the crisis overall. They are also larger and relatively less capital-intensive, although they have relatively high fixed assets in the form of IT equipment and intangible assets when compared with other companies. The estimations show that a significant global increase in the use of telework in the long term could increase productivity by around 10%. The results also reveal the non-linear effects of telework on productivity. Companies that were already practising telework in 2019 were more likely than others to want to increase this in the future and those that were looking to do so were more likely to be planning an increase in their IT investment, as well as a change of premises.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonin Bergeaud & Gilbert Cette & Simon Drapala, 2023. "Telework and Productivity Before, During and After the COVID‑19 Crisis," Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), issue 539, pages 73-89.
    • Handle: RePEc:nse:ecosta:ecostat_2023_539_4
    DOI: https://doi.org/10.24187/ecostat.2023.539.2098
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://WWW.insee.fr/en/statistiques/fichier/6791190/04_ES539_Bergeaud-et-al_EN.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/https://doi.org/10.24187/ecostat.2023.539.2098?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dingel, Jonathan I. & Neiman, Brent, 2020. "How many jobs can be done at home?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    2. Antonin Bergeaud & Simon Ray, 2021. "Adjustment Costs and Factor Demand: New Evidence from Firms’ Real Estate [The heterogeneous impact of market size on innovation: evidence from French firm-level exports]," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(633), pages 70-100.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pierre Pora, 2023. "Comment – Telework and Productivity Three Years After the Start of the Pandemic," Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), issue 539, pages 91-96.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bergeaud, Antonin & Eyméoud, Jean-Benoît & Garcia, Thomas & Henricot, Dorian, 2023. "Working from home and corporate real estate," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    2. Guillaume Gueguen & Claudia Senik, 2023. "Adopting telework: The causal impact of working from home on subjective well‐being," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 61(4), pages 832-868, December.
    3. Couch, Kenneth A. & Fairlie, Robert W. & Xu, Huanan, 2020. "Early evidence of the impacts of COVID-19 on minority unemployment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    4. Jacek Rothert, 2020. "Optimal federal redistribution during the uncoordinated response to a pandemic," Departmental Working Papers 64, United States Naval Academy Department of Economics.
    5. Piotr Lewandowski & Katarzyna Lipowska & Mateusz Smoter, 2022. "Working from home during a pandemic – a discrete choice experiment in Poland," IBS Working Papers 03/2022, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    6. Lee, Munseob & Finerman, Rachel, 2021. "COVID-19, commuting flows, and air quality," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    7. Bart Roelofs & Dimitris Ballas & Hinke Haisma & Arjen Edzes, 2022. "Spatial mobility patterns and COVID‐19 incidence: A regional analysis of the second wave in the Netherlands," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(S1), pages 21-40, November.
    8. Lewandowski, Piotr & Lipowska, Katarzyna & Smoter, Mateusz, 2023. "Mismatch in preferences for working from home: Evidence from discrete choice experiments with workers and employers," Ruhr Economic Papers 1026, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    9. Juan C. Palomino & Juan G. Rodríguez & Raquel Sebastian, 2023. "The COVID-19 shock on the labour market: poverty and inequality effects across Spanish regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(5), pages 814-828, May.
    10. Claudia Hupkau & Barbara Petrongolo, 2020. "Work, Care and Gender during the COVID‐19 Crisis," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(3), pages 623-651, September.
    11. David Baqaee & Emmanuel Farhi, 2020. "Nonlinear Production Networks with an Application to the Covid-19 Crisis," NBER Working Papers 27281, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Gottlieb Charles & Grobovšek Jan & Poschke Markus & Saltiel Fernando, 2022. "Lockdown Accounting," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 22(1), pages 197-210, January.
    13. Graham, James & Ozbilgin, Murat, 2021. "Age, industry, and unemployment risk during a pandemic lockdown," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    14. Basso, Gaetano & Boeri, Tito & Caiumi, Alessandro & Paccagnella, Marco, 2020. "The New Hazardous Jobs and Worker Reallocation," IZA Discussion Papers 13532, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Carlos Díaz & Sebastian Fossati & Nicolás Trajtenberg, 2022. "Stay at home if you can: COVID‐19 stay‐at‐home guidelines and local crime," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 1067-1113, December.
    16. Louis-Philippe Beland & Abel Brodeur & Taylor Wright, 2020. "COVID-19, Stay-at-Home Orders and Employment: Evidence from CPS Data," Carleton Economic Papers 20-04, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 19 May 2020.
    17. John McLaren & Su Wang, 2020. "Effects of Reduced Workplace Presence on COVID-19 Deaths: An Instrumental-Variables Approach," NBER Working Papers 28275, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Kouki, Amairisa, 2023. "Beyond the “Comforts” of work from home: Child health and the female wage penalty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    19. Stefano Magrini & Alessandro Spiganti, 2021. "The Day After Covid-19: Implications for Growth, Specialization, and Inequality," Working Papers 2021:13, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    20. Nizamani, Sarah & Waheed, Muhammad Shahid, 2020. "Poverty and Inequality amid COVID-19 – Evidence from Pakistan’s Labour Market," MPRA Paper 100422, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nse:ecosta:ecostat_2023_539_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Veronique Egloff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inseefr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.