Researcher ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0009-0004-1289-3771

abizermmamnoon@gmail.com

Graduation Year

2025

Date of Submission

11-2024

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

Professor Darren Filson

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Rights Information

© 2024 Abizer Mamnoon

Abstract

Immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic, workers performed 14% of their paid hours from home, but this figure increased to 38% after the pandemic (Chen et al. 2023). This thesis contributes to our understanding of the determinants of remote work and the factors affecting how far an individual lives from the workplace in the post-pandemic period.

I use 1.95 million observations of worker-specific LinkedIn data from August 2023. I construct a measure of remote suitability using Dingel and Neiman’s (2020) method to assign each job title a remote suitability score based on the associated occupation. I use a Tobit regression to study the effect of an individual's highest level of education, technical skills, and seniority level on the remote suitability of their job title. I find that post-high school education and seniority above entry level positively impact the remote suitability of an individual’s job title. An individual with high technical skills related to computing, such as knowledge of programming languages, is also more likely to have a more remote suitable job.

I use Tobit model to study the effect of remote suitability, relative housing prices, and relative populations on the distance an individual lives from the workplace. Surprisingly, individuals with more suitable remote jobs live closer to the workplace. Individuals live further away if the ratio of housing costs closer to the workplace to those in surrounding counties is higher, but this effect is less pronounced if the remote suitability score of the job is higher. Individuals live closer to the workplace if the ratio of population close to the workplace to those in surrounding counties is higher. I also find that the interaction between remote suitability and relative populations favors living further away from work if surrounding counties have a lower population.

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