IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/32834.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Remote Work and Political Preferences: Evidence from U.S. Counties

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin W. Cowan
  • Kairon Shayne D. Garcia

Abstract

We examine how trends in remote work vary by U.S. county-level characteristics. Using several data sources with various definitions of remote work, we show that 2016 presidential Democratic vote share is associated with an increase in remote work starting in 2020 and continuing through 2023. An increase in 2016 Democratic vote share of one standard deviation is related to an increase in the likelihood of remote work by 1-2 percentage points and the share of job postings that advertise a remote-work component by about 2 percentage points. These effects are not altered by differences in various COVID policies and outcomes or labor-market indicators. We hypothesize that differences in preferences for workplace flexibility that are correlated with local political tastes opened a gap in remote-work rates once the pandemic-induced “remote-work revolution” substantially increased individuals’ opportunities for working from home.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin W. Cowan & Kairon Shayne D. Garcia, 2024. "Remote Work and Political Preferences: Evidence from U.S. Counties," NBER Working Papers 32834, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32834
    Note: LS PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w32834.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H73 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Interjurisdictional Differentials and Their Effects
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:32834. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.