New survey of 802 experimental/behavioral economists finds:

(a) most support preserving anonymity for referees

(b) most are open to publishing anonymized referee reports

Preprint: osf.io/preprints/me...

By @danieljevans.bsky.social, @adam-gill.bsky.social, et al.

Scandinavian employees work more from home. Likely causes are high trust and advanced technology. Increases in remote work affect the spatial distribution of local service jobs, from Adam Gill, Lena E. Hensvik, and Oskar Nordström Skans https://www.nber.org/papers/w33581

New NBER WP (forthcoming book chapter) with @adam-gill.bsky.social and Lena Hensvik on the very high rates of work-from-home in all Nordic countries -- already before the pandemic. Some likely causes, and some consequences for service workers www.nber.org/papers/w33581

6/ Overall, we find that trust is a key driver of regional differences in WFH and it is important for sustaining WFH at firm and aggregate levels.

We also find interesting heterogeneity by WFH type and occupation potential.

See the paper for more detail: docs.iza.org/dp17468.pdf

5/ In 2019, high-trust areas had significantly more WFH than low-trust ones, even with individual and region controls. By 2021, trust effects grew stronger.

No evidence of low-trust areas “catching up”—trust reinforced WFH, especially in mid-remote roles and for managers.

4/ We use trust data from the European Social Survey aggregated at country, region, and region-by-industry levels, and WFH data from the European Labor Force Surveys.

Our key trust measure—managers believe “people are fair”— predicts WFH better than institutional trust metrics.

3/ In a stylized model, we show how managerial trust shapes WFH when firms weigh wage savings vs. productivity loss from shirking.

Prediction: Firms should only offer WFH in settings where there is high aggregate trust, since unilateral deviation will only attract shirkers.

2/ WFH is rising but it is challenging for managers due to loss of oversight, making trust essential for WFH.

The data shows that higher managerial trust (belief that “most people are fair”) links to higher WFH rates pre-pandemic (2019) and greater WFH growth (2019–2021).

1/ TL;DR:

Managerial trust strongly correlates with WFH. Places where managers believe people are trustworthy had higher WFH rates pre- and mid-pandemic—even when controlling for occupations, demographics, digital skills, & GDP.

More below 👇

🚨New Working Paper!🚨

Excited to share a new IZA DP (No. 17468) with @oskarnskans.bsky.social looking at the relationship between trust and work from home (WFH). #EconSky

“Trusted from Home: Managerial Beliefs and Workers’ Spatial Autonomy”

docs.iza.org/dp17468.pdf

A short 🧵…