The Costs and Benefits of Home Office during the Covid-19 Pandemic - Evidence from Infections and an Input-Output Model for Germany

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Jan Schymik, University of Mannheim (Germany); Harald Fadinger, University of Mannheim (Germany)

Version: View help for Version V2

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Project Citation:

Schymik, Jan, and Fadinger, Harald. The Costs and Benefits of Home Office during the Covid-19 Pandemic - Evidence from Infections and an Input-Output Model for Germany. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-11-01. https://doi.org/10.3886/E124902V2

Project Description

Summary: We study the impact of working from home on (i) infection risk in German regions and (ii) output using an input-output (IO) model of the German economy. We find that working from home is very effective in reducing infection risk: regions whose industry structure allows for a larger fraction of work to be done from home experienced much fewer Covid-19 cases and fatalities. Moreover, confinement is significantly more costly in terms of induced output loss in regions where the share of workers who can work from home is lower. When phasing out confinement, home office should be maintained as long as possible, to allow those workers who cannot work from home to go back to work, while keeping infection risk minimal. Finally, systemic industries (with high multipliers and/or high value added per worker) should be given priority, especially those where home office is not possible.

Funding Sources: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany) (CRC TR 224 (Project B6))

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Working from Home; Input-Output Model; Confinement; COVID-19

Geographic Coverage: Germany

Time Period(s): 2020 – 2020 (Spring 2020)

Methodology

Data Source:

Eurostat

Robert Koch Institut

Geographic Unit: NUTS 2 (Regierungsbezirke)

Related Publications

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Published Versions

V2 [2020-11-01]

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Dublin Core

DDI 2.5

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