In this article, we show that working from home is much more prevalent in the Nordic countries than in the rest of Europe and we discuss potential causes and labor market consequences of this stylized fact. Likely contributing causes include a good technological infrastructure and comparatively widespread digital preparedness in the population. Recent research also suggests that trust is a crucial prerequisite for maintaining a spatial separation between supervisors and workers in marginal occupations. We show that survey measures of trust are extremely high in all Nordic countries, and that these measures correlate very strongly with work-from-home across countries and industries in Europe even controlling for a range of cross-country differences. Finally, we discuss potential spillover effects of increased hybrid work on the Nordic labor markets. We show evidence suggesting that increased hybrid work has caused a relocation of the production of local service firms from business centers to high-work-from-home residential areas, without affecting average commuting distances of service workers. 

A key difference between on-site and remote work is the reduction in direct managerial oversight when tasks are performed outside traditional office settings. We use survey data on manager trust—measured by the question "...do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance?"—and relate the answers to employees' work-from-home intensities. Our results show that the remote work intensity is higher in countries, regions, and regions-by-industries where managers have higher levels of trust. This association remains robust after controlling for other dimensions of societal trust and confounding factors such as occupation types, broadband access, and digital skills. Manager trust was strongly related to work-from-home levels before the pandemic, and the association became even stronger for occupations in the middle of the remote work distribution following the pandemic surge in work from home. Overall, our findings suggest that manager trust is a crucial prerequisite for high sustained levels of remote work.

The increase in the number of people working from home (WFH) not only has a direct effect on high WFH-potential industries, but also has more widespread impacts on the structure of cities and non-remote industries. In this paper, we investigate the effect of WFH on local service industries using Swedish administrative data and a difference-in-differences approach. We find evidence that restaurant production shifted towards more residential areas due to the increase in WFH and that this shift has persisted into the post-pandemic period, suggesting that there may be some longer-term spatial reorganization of cities. Restaurant workers are also impacted by these changes with workers employed at restaurants in more residential areas having increased earnings, likely driven by increased hours worked. We find no effects on employment or commuting distance suggesting no residential sorting by restaurant workers. 

Open science initiatives have gained traction in recent years. However, open peer-review practices, i.e., reforms that (i) modify the identifiability of stakeholders and (ii) establish channels for the open communication of information between stakeholders, have seen very little adoption in economics. In this paper, we explore the feasibility and desirability of such reforms. We present insights derived from survey data documenting the attitudes of 802 experimental/behavioral economists, a conceptual framework, a literature review, and cross-disciplinary data on current journal practices. On (i), most respondents support preserving anonymity for referees, but views about anonymity for authors and associate editors are mixed. On (ii), most respondents are open to publishing anonymized referee reports, sharing reports between referees, and allowing authors to appeal editorial decisions. Active reviewers, editors, and respondents from the US/Canada are generally less open to transparency reforms.

Peer review is central to the lives of researchers. We conduct a survey on improving peer review, to which we received over 1,400 responses from economists who made the effort to respond a not-so-short survey during a difficult time (COVID-19 pandemic). The survey is the bedrock of this article, which was written to (i) document the current state of peer review and (ii) investigate concrete steps towards improving it. We offer a snapshot of the recent submission and peer review activity of respondents, detailing the difficulties they report facing, and measuring their attitudes about the various component issues and the proposals suggested to address them. We hope that this report will provide fertile ground for the development and implementation of practical solutions for improving peer review in economics.

Working from home (WFH) is particularly prevalent in the Nordic countries. The likely causes of this include the Nordic countries’ occupational structure, technological infrastructure, digital preparedness and high levels of trust between different agents. Working from home most often takes a hybrid form, in which remote working is combined with on-site activities. This compromise reduces commuting time while still allowing for face-to-face communication and coordination during parts of the working week. Although the findings from research on productivity effects are mixed, many employers may benefit from introducing hybrid working because it may help them recruit and retain employees. Suitable arrangements are likely to be specific to each organisation, and policy makers should remain as neutral as possible in this process of transformation. Policy makers should monitor a number of possible indirect effects, including changes to city structures and the impact on inequality and workers’ health.