We show that task juggling, i.e., the spreading of effort across too many active projects, decreases the performance of workers, raising the chances of low throughput, long duration of projects and exploding backlogs. Individual speed of job completion cannot be explained only in terms of...

Using data from the US Postal Service and Zillow, we quantify the effect of Covid-19 on migration patterns and real estate markets within and across US cities. We find two key results. First, within large US cities, households, businesses, and real estate demand have moved from dense central...

Using longitudinal data on the location of mobile devices, we provide new evidence on the evolution of onsite work (OSW) over the course of the pandemic and its aftermath. We start with a large sample of individuals who, based on their mobile device activity, had a job at which they worked...

We study the adoption of remote work within cities and its effect on city structure and welfare. We develop a dynamic model of a city in which workers can decide to work in the central business district (CBD) or partly at home. Working in the CBD allows them to interact with other commuters,...

Hybrid working from home (WFH), whereby employees work a mix of days at home and at work each week, has become dominant for graduate employees in the US. This paper evaluates a randomized control trial on 1612 engineers, marketing and finance employees of a large technology firm that allowed odd...

Introduction / William J. Collins and Robert A. Margo -- Business organization and internal governance. Revisiting American exceptionalism: democracy and the regulation of corporate governance: the case of nineteenth-century Pennsylvania in comparative context / Naomi R. Lamoreaux -- Corporate...

This paper studies how competition affects firms' expectations in a new dynamic general equilibrium model with rational inattention and oligopolistic competition where firms acquire information about their competitors' beliefs. In the model, firms with fewer competitors are less attentive to...

China's admission into the WTO in 2001 heralded a new era of globalization, increasing both import competition in domestic markets and foreign opportunities for US firms. In the aggregate, the average annual profitability of US public firms during the post globalization period (2003-2019)...

Combining confidential Census worker and firm data, we find three key results. First, employees at more productive firms earn higher pay at all earnings levels. Second, this pay-productivity relationship strengthens with seniority, doubling from an elasticity of 0.07 for pay on productivity for...