Research
WORKING PAPERS
Do Remote Workers Deter Neighborhood Crime? Evidence from the Rise of Working from Home, (2024) J. Matheson, B. McConnell, J. Rockey, A. Sakalis. CESifo working paper No. 10924. PDF, revise and resubmit at Review of Economic Studies.
Media Coverage: New York Times, The Guardian, The Guardian, The Economic Times
Abstract
In this paper, we provide the first evidence of the effect of the shift to remote work on crime. We examine the impact of the rise of working from home (WFH) on neighborhood-level burglary rates, exploiting geographically granular crime data and a neighborhood WFH measure. We document three key findings. First, a one standard deviation increase in neighborhood WFH (9.5pp) leads to a persistent 4% drop in burglaries. This effect is large, explaining more than half of the 30% decrease in burglaries across England and Wales since 2019. Second, this treatment effect exhibits heterogeneity according to the remote work capacity of contiguous neighborhoods. Specifically, being surrounded by relatively high WFH neighborhoods can entirely offset the crime-reducing benefit of a given neighborhood's WFH potential. This is consistent with the predictions of a spatial search model of criminal activity that we develop in the paper. Finally, we document large welfare gains to the decrease in burglary. We estimate welfare gains using a hedonic house price model. Our most conservative estimates show the welfare gains are £24.5billion (1% of 2022 UK GDP), but the true gains are likely much higher. These estimates suggest the reduction in burglaries are among the most important consequences of the rise in WFH.
Abstract
Since 2020, London experienced a 400% increase in teleworking among skilled workers. We propose a model that studies the implications of teleworking on (i) the residential structure of cities, (ii) the wage structure between skilled and unskilled workers, and (iii) the provision of local service in central and residential areas. Increased teleworking reduces the willingness to pay for residential proximity to the city center, and thus induces the residential movement of skilled workers towards the suburbs. The magnitude of this structural change, and its effect on labor markets and skilled/unskilled wage inequality, depends on the desirability of local services available in central and residential areas. In a two-city extension, teleworking moves skilled workers from the productive (and expensive) city to the less productive city. This has implications for residential structure and individual welfare in both cities. We find empirical evidence on changes in housing prices, skilled wage premium, and location changes for local services businesses in England consistent with the model’s predictions.
Abstract
Remote working, at least some of the time, has rapidly become the new norm in many sectors. Remote working changes where workers spend much of their time, and because of this, it also changes the geographical location of demand, particularly in sectors which supply local personal services (LPS). We quantify this change for England and Wales. To do this, we use a bespoke, nationally representative, survey of nearly 35,000 working age adults, which predicts long-term changes in remote working and in LPS spending while at work. On average, we find that a neighbourhood to which people commute 20% less often experiences a decline in LPS spending of 7%. There is a clear geographic pattern to these spending changes: large decreases in LPS demand are concentrated in a small number of city-centre neighbourhoods, while increases in LPS demand are more uniformly distributed. Further analysis of neighbourhoods geographical and socio-demographic characteristics shows the least affluent neighbourhoods see least benefit from remote work.
Covid reallocation of spending: The effect of remote working on the retail and hospitality sector, (2021) G. De Fraja, J. Matheson, P. Mizen, J. Rockey, S. Taneja, and G. Thwaites. Sheffield Economics Research Paper Series, number 2021006. PDF
Invited column: The Economics Observatory
Media Coverage (selected): The Guardian, The National News, The Times, Daily Mail, World Economic Forum
Abstract
A defining economic outcome from the Covid-19 pandemic is the unprecedented shift towards remote working from home. The extent and duration of this shift will have important consequences for local economies and especially the retail and hospitality sectors which depend on business around the workplace. Using a new bespoke, nationally representative survey of UK working age adults we analyse their ability and willingness to work remotely, and the consequences for spending on food, beverages, retail and entertainment around the workplace. We establish five key facts. (i) The post-pandemic change will be large: the fraction of work done from home will increase by 20 percentage points over its pre-pandemic level. (ii) The Dingel-Neiman (2020) assessment of remote working potential by occupation are reasonably predictive of what workers and employers expect to do, with a correlation coefficient of over 0.7. (iii) Relocation will be higher for better paid professional occupations, which will skew spending toward the most socio-economically affluent geographical areas. (iv) The corresponding geographical shift in annual retail and hospitality spending will be £3.0 billion with more remote working shifting demand away from urban areas. (v) On average, a 1% change in neighbourhood workforce changes local spending by 0.25%.
PUBLICATIONS
Abstract
This paper estimates the impact of particulate matter pollutants, measured by PM 10 levels, on public healthcare costs for youth and older adult populations. To do this, we use administrative data from a large UK hospital and exploit spatial and temporal variation in PM 10 levels. We find that patient enrolment increases when their neighbourhood experiences higher levels of PM 10. Specifically, a standard deviation increase in PM 10 levels increases the enrolment of patients age 60 years and older by 6.4%, and the enrolment of patients under 18 years of age by 2.8%. Using detailed costing information, we calculate that a standard deviation increase in PM 10 increases public healthcare costs by £923, 931.80 per year.
Abstract
In this paper we estimate the importance of local labour structure in the spread of COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic. We build a unique data set across 6,700 neighbourhoods in England that allows us to distinguish between people living (residents) and people working (workers) in a neighbourhood, and to differentiate between jobs that can be done from home (homeworkers), jobs that likely continued on-site (keyworkers), and non-essential on-site jobs. We use these data to study the relationship between the within-city variation in neighbourhood population/employment structures and the within-city variation in COVID-19 spread. Neighbourhood labour structure is important, explaining approximately 9.5% of the within-city variation over-and-above population density and other confounders. Holding residential population constant, 50 more residents working from home decreases neighbourhood cases by almost one-third relative to the mean; having 50 more residents in keywork jobs increases neighbourhood cases by almost two-thirds. We find the magnitude of these results varies by neighbourhood deprivation levels. In high-deprivation neighbourhoods, the positive effect of keyworkers on cases is larger, while the protective effect of homeworkers is lower than in more affluent areas. We speculate on how the various types of occupations within these job categories drive the differences across neighbourhoods. These findings point to important asymmetries in the social justice of the policy response to COVID-19, providing useful insights for the design of future economic policies and public health strategies during the endemic phase of the disease.
The impact of improving access to support services for victims of domestic violence on demand for services and victim outcomes, (2024) M. Foureaux-Koppensteiner, J. Matheson and R. Plugor. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 16(1), 292–324. PDF (Link includes main paper and appendix)
Invited column: VoxEU
Abstract
We conducted a randomised controlled trial of an intervention designed to assist victims of domestic violence in accessing non-police support services. The intervention led to a 22% decrease in the fraction of victims providing a witness statement to police. Witness statements are an important piece of evidence and a key input in the prosecution of perpetrators. Despite this, we do not find a significant change in perpetrator arrests and convictions or in reported future violence. Survey responses provide evidence of an increase in non-police service use, a reduction in future victimisation risk, but also a potential decrease in short-run well-being.
A "food insecurity poverty line" to replace the official threshold in Canadian rural and urban settings? A single-person household perspective, (2024) K. Ross, T. Liu, X. Guo, J. Matheson, D.J. Dutton., Journal of Public Health Policy, available at: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41271-024-00485-2 .
Abstract
Household food insecurity is associated with both low income and high cost of living, it is a potentially better measure for consumption compared to income. We use data on food insecurity and income from 10 years of the Canadian Community Health Survey (2007–2017) of single-person households (n = 145,044) to estimate the probability of being food insecure at the Canadian poverty thresholds (Market Basket Measure thresholds, or MBMs), and determine the income required to reach that probability in each MBM region, aggregated by province and rural/urban status. A regression model shows the probability of being food insecure at the MBM is approximately 30% which we call the Food Insecurity Poverty Line (FIPL). The income required to meet the FIPL is substantially different from the MBM, sometimes 1.25 times the MBM. This implies that food insecurity is a potential sentinel measure for poverty.
Teleworking: Spatial Analysis and Well Being, (2023) J. Matheson and A. Sakalis. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. LINK
Abstract
The COVID pandemic has led to a large, and likely permanent, increase in teleworking. This has important implications for spatial sorting within and across cities. This chapter reviews some of the strategies for measuring large-scale changes in teleworking across space. It will discuss what is known about the mechanism behind spatial patterns, such as why teleworkers are so concentrated in the largest cities. Three important mechanisms explaining the post-pandemic spatial distribution of teleworking are identified: 1) industry differences in agglomeration; 2) wage differences by occupation; 3) the availability of infrastructure, such as internet access. The post-pandemic increase in teleworking is likely to result in many workers experiencing greater flexibility in their jobs, particularly with respect to the need to commute. A reduction in costly commuting has potential implications for how workers organize themselves within space, the spatial variation in land rents, and where footfall for non-teleworking local services is concentrated. The theory and evidence on how a permanent change in teleworking will affect the organization of workers across space, and the implications that these changes will have for the wellbeing of teleworkers and the broader economy is examined.
Cis women’s bodies at work: co-modification and (in)visibility in organization and management studies and menopause at work scholarship, (2022) J. Brewis, V. Beck and J. Matheson. International Journal of Management Reviews. 25(3), 495-514 LINK.
Related policy paper: The effects of menopause transition on women's economic participation in the UK
Invited column: The Conversation
Abstract
This paper reviews research on cis women’s bodily self-discipline in the workplace. We compare literature exemplifying the ‘bodily turn’ in organization and management studies to scholarship on menopause at work, to identify key themes across these oeuvres and the significance of the blind spots in each. There is little overlap between them: only eleven organization and management studies publications dealt with menopause. In classifying these literatures using Forbes’ (2009) concept of co-modification, we distil four themes: bodily moulding; non-disclosure; failing; and resistance, redefinition and reclamation. Based on this, we argue for more substantive considerations of menopause in organization and management studies, and suggest what the organization and management literature has to offer its sister scholarship. For example, we foreground how menopause exacerbates the visibility paradox facing female workers which organization and management studies identifies; and argue that menopause at work scholarship should pay more attention to specific bodily accommodations, refusals and the ‘unscripted’ aspects of menopause in organizations.
Zoomshock: The geography and local labour market consequences of working from home, (2021) G. De Fraja, J. Matheson and J. Rockey. Covid Economics: Vetted and Real-Time Papers. 64, 1-41. PDF, Public Data and Replication
Invited columns: The Conversation, VoxEU, The Economics Observatory
Media Coverage (selected): BBC Radio 4, New Statesman, The Telegraph, The Irish Times, Forbes
Abstract
The Covid-19 health crisis has led to a substantial increase in work done from home, which shifts economic activity across geographic space. We refer to this shift as a Zoomshock. The Zoomshock has implications for locally consumed services; much of the clientele of restaurants, coffee bars, pubs, hair stylists, health clubs, and the like located near workplaces is transferred to establishments located near where people live. In this paper we measure the Zoomshock at a very granular level for UK neighbourhoods. We establish three important empirical facts. First, the Zoomshock is large; many workers can work-from-home and live in a different neighbourhood than they work. Second, the Zoomshock is very heterogeneous; economic activity is decreasing in productive city centres and increasing residential suburbs. Third, the Zoomshock moves workers away from neighbourhoods with a large supply of locally consumed services to neighbourhoods where the supply of these services is relatively scarce. We discuss the implications for aggregate employment and local economic recovery following the Covid-19 health crisis.
Abstract
This article investigates the effect of increasing secondary education opportunities on teenage fertility in Brazil. We construct a novel dataset to exploit variation from a 57% increase in secondary schools across 4,884 Brazilian municipalities between 1997 and 2009. We find that an increase of one school per 100 females reduces a cohort’s teenage birthrate by between 0.250 and 0.563 births per 100, or a reduction of one birth for roughly every 50 to 100 students who enroll in secondary education.
Teaching by example and induced beliefs in a model of cultural transmission, (2018) Adriani F., J. Matheson and S. Sonderegger. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 145, 511–529. PDF
Abstract
We augment standard models of cultural transmission with an explicit account of social learning, grounded in the information transmission literature. Youngsters observe the behavioral trait of a role model and form beliefs about the desirability of that trait. Adults have better information about each trait and have a paternalistic attitude toward their children. This makes them reluctant to adopt myopic behavior to avoid setting a negative example to their children. This signaling distortion increases in the influence parents have over their offspring. We extend the model to allow parental influence to depend on the population frequency of each trait and show that cultural complementarity does not imply convergence to a homogeneous population. We find empirical support for a positive relationship between parental influence and propensity to exert self-restraint by looking at alcohol and tobacco consumption.
A simple model of homophily in social networks, (2016) Currarini, S., J. Matheson and F. Vega-Redondo. European Economic Review, 90, 18–39. PDF
Abstract
Biases in meeting opportunities have been recently shown to play a key role for the emergence of homophily in social networks (see Currarini et al., 2009). The aim of this paper is to provide a simple microfoundation of these biases in a model where the size and type-composition of the meeting pools are shaped by agents׳ socialization decisions. In particular, agents either inbreed (direct search only to similar types) or outbreed (direct search to population at large). When outbreeding is costly, this is shown to induce stark equilibrium behavior of a threshold type: agents “inbreed” (i.e. mostly meet their own type) if, and only if, their group is above certain size. We show that this threshold equilibrium generates patterns of in-group and cross-group ties that are consistent with empirical evidence of homophily in two paradigmatic instances: high school friendships and interethnic marriages.
Prices and social behavior: Evidence from adult smoking in Canadian Aboriginal communities, (2016) Matheson, J. Canadian Journal of Economics, 48:5, 1661–1693. PDF
Abstract
This paper provides estimates of tobacco price elasticity explicitly distinguishing between two price effects: the direct effect, reflecting individual reaction to a price change, and the indirect effect, whereby price influences the individual by changing community smoking behaviour. Canada's Aboriginal communities are small and secluded, allowing for plausible identification of reference groups on a relatively large scale. Estimates suggest a 10% increase in price decreases daily smoking by 0.91 percentage points (2.11%), occasional smoking by 1.24 percentage points (8.27%) and average smoking intensity by 0.15 cigarettes per day (2.9%). It is found that the indirect effect almost doubles the response to a change in tobacco prices over the direct effect alone.
Women respondents report higher household food insecurity than do men in similar Canadian households, Matheson, J., and L. McIntyre. Public Health Nutrition, 17:1 (2014), 40–48. PDF
Abstract
The Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) is the gold standard for measuring household food insecurity using a household survey. We investigate the hypothesis that men and women systematically report differently for this survey using a large survey of married Canadian households in which the sex of the survey respondent is randomized. We find that a married household is 46% more likely to be identified as food insecure, according to the HFSSM, if the survey respondent is female. Consistent with randomization of respondent sex, all other household characteristics (income, children, education, etc) are statistically identical for male and female respondents. We discuss the possible mechanisms and implications of this for the measurement of population food insecurity.
Addiction, Auld, C., and Matheson, J. (A.J. Cuyler, ed) The Encyclopedia of Health Economics, (2014), 19–25. LINK
Abstract
This article discusses economic theories of addiction. In economics, an addictive good or activity has the property that increases in consumption today increase consumption tomorrow. In contrast to most other disciplines, this definition views addiction as a behavioral concept as opposed to a physiological or biological concept. This article outlines attempts by economic theorists and econometricians to address addiction, and highlights some implications for treatment, policy, and understanding of addictive behaviors.
Resource allocation, affluence and deadweight loss when relative consumption matters, (2013) Eaton, B.C., and J. Matheson, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 91, 159–178. LINK
Abstract
We explore the link between affluence and well-being using a simple general equilibrium model with a pure Veblen good. Individuals derive utility from the pure Veblen good based solely on how much they consume relative to others. In equilibrium, consumption of the pure Veblen good is the same for everyone, so the Veblen good contributes nothing to utility. Hence, resources devoted to the Veblen good provide us with a measure of deadweight loss. We ask: Under what preference conditions does the proportion of productive capacity devoted to the pure Veblen good increase as an economy becomes more affluent? In a relatively general preference framework we derive a sufficient condition for which the Veblen good crowds out standard forms of consumption and leisure, resulting in an inverse relationship between affluence and utility. With additional structure on the model we are able to fully characterize the behavior of deadweight loss and utility as an economy becomes more affluent.
Should income transfers be targeted or universal? Insights from public pension influences on elderly mortality in Canada, 1921–1966, (2012) Emery, H. and J. Matheson. Canadian Journal of Economics, 45:1, 247–269. LINK
Abstract
We investigate the impact of three public pension programs on the mortality rates of recipient age groups in Canada. The Old Age Pension (OAP), introduced in 1927 for Canadians over age 70, and Old Age Assistance (OAA), implemented in 1952 for Canadians aged 65–69, were means tested programs while Old Age Security (OAS), introduced in 1952 for Canadians over age 70, was a universal plan. Our data consist of age-specific mortality rates and pension information, by province, for the period 1921–1966. The three dimensional feature of this panel allows us to exploit variation in policy implementation dates across provinces, and changes in income and age group eligibility. We find that the implementation of all three pension programs resulted in statistically significant reductions in recipient age group mortality rates and that the effect of the federal universal OAS of 1952 was twice as large as either of the means tested plans. However, the number of lives extended with the universal OAS was small and the estimated cost per life extended large.
Evidence of the association between food insecurity and heating cost inflation in Canada, 1998-2001, Bartoo, A., H. Emery, J. Matheson, A. Ferrer, S. Kirkpatrick, V. Tarasuk, and L. McIntyre. Canadian Public Policy, 38:2 (2012), 181–215. LINK
Abstract
We investigated the 5.3 percentage point increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in Canada between the National Population Health Survey of 1998-99 and the Canadian Community Health Survey of 2000-01. We found that the increase in food insecurity occurred disproportionately in households in the western provinces, particularly Alberta, and among homeowners rather than renters. Inter-provincial variation in heating cost inflation explained as much as 61 percent of the inter-provincial variation in food insecurity increases between 1998 and 2001.
PROTOCOL PAPERS FOR GLOBAL RECHARGE PROJECT
Culturally adapted pulmonary rehabilitation for adults living with post-tuberculosis lung disease in Kyrgyzstan: protocol for a randomised controlled trial with blinded outcome measures, (2022) BMJ Open, 12(2). LINK
Protocol for a single-centre mixed-methods pre-post single-arm feasibility trial of a culturally appropriate six-week pulmonary rehabilitation programme among adults with functionally limiting chronic respiratory diseases in Malawi, (2022) BMJ Open, 12(1). LINK
Study protocol for a randomised controlled trial assessing the impact of pulmonary rehabilitation on maximal exercise capacity for adults living with post-TB lung disease: Global RECHARGE Uganda, (2021) BMJ Open, 11(8). LINK
Global RECHARGE: Establishing a standard international data set for pulmonary rehabilitation in low- and middle-income countries, Journal of Global Health, (2020) 10(2). LINK
Protocol for the cultural adaptation of pulmonary rehabilitation and subsequent testing in a randomised controlled feasibility trial for adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in Sri Lanka, (2020) BMJ Open, 10(11). LINK
COLUMNS & POPULAR WRITING
Reducing barriers to support services in domestic violence cases leads to more effective use of police services VoxEU, 12 May 2023. LINK
Teleworking will reshape labour markets and cities, VoxEU, 6 December 2022. LINK
Remote working and the new geography of local service spending, VoxEU, 17 November 2022. LINK
What does remote working mean for regional economies in the UK?, Economics Observatory, 04 February 2022. LINK
Zoomshock: how is working from home affecting cities and suburbs?, Economics Observatory, 15 February 2021. LINK
The geography of working from home and the implications for the service industry.", Vox EU, 11 February 2021. LINK
Five charts that reveal how remote working could change the UK., The Conversation, 2 February 2021. LINK
Why has coronavirus affected cities more than rural areas?, Economics Observatory, 12 July 2020. LINK
What does coronavirus mean for the future of sport and fitness clubs?, Economics Observatory, 9 July 2020. LINK
How has coronavirus affected pubs, cafes and restaurants?, Economics Observatory, 2 July 2020. LINK
Improving access to domestic violence support services leads to a more efficient use of police resources, Sheffield Economics Blog on Medium, 19 July 2019. LINK
Three reasons employers need to recognise the menopause at work, The Conversation, 6 September 2017. LINK