What to expect from the rise of working from home

Existing estimates of the effects of working from home (see for example 1 ) show that: The COVID crisis could lead the proportion of skilled and highly skilled workers who work at home to double (from 20% to 40%); The productivity of skilled and highly skilled workers is markedly higher when they work from home rather than at the office (by 34% in the United States). The consequences of this development are clear: Increase in the wages of skilled relative to unskilled workers and increase in income inequality; Decrease s in office real estate prices , rents and demand for office space and problems for cities as a result; Increase in residential real estate prices (due to the increase in demand among workers who work from home); Overall increase in labour productivity; Decrease in CO 2 emissions. 1 M. Davis, A. Ghent, J. Gregory, “The Work-at-Home Technology Boon and its Consequences”, NBER Working Paper no. 28461, February 2021.