Work from home : new equilibrium, new opportunities for all
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Date
2021
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Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the transition to a Work-From-Home (WFH) modality generating a set of implications: the importance of a neighborhood or a comfortable house the decision of workers to migrate from expensive to cheaper housing locations, among others. In this thesis, I study how telework modalities affect the shape of a region, emphasizing the effects in different workers types. I develop a quantitative spatial model to understand the impact of the work-from-home phenomenon, which allows agglomeration forces, amenities, and the workers' decision of residence and workplace location to maximize their utility. I extend the model including a non-tradable sector, and a special effort is made to provide the model with characteristics to identify the effects of this phenomenon between and within skill-type groups of the economy, not only the impact on teleworkers. I found that high-skill agents move their residences to suburban areas and move their workplace to the productive area, and second, low-skill agents disperse from the productive area to the rest of the region, related with the highest wages in the non-tradable. Finally, I conclude that the incorporation and massification of teleworking would increase the well-being of all kinds of agents.
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Tesis (Magíster en Economía)--Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2021