Coordinated by professors Jordi Jofre-Monseny and Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal, the IEB Report 1/2021 was presented at an event organized jointly with the Barcelona Provincial Council, and attended by experts from a range of fields. The report, entitled “COVID-19, working from home and the future of cities“, analyses the extent to which the practice of working from home (WFH) due to the pandemic may affect urban life.

The first article in the report, by Brindusa Anghel and Aitor Lacuesta of the Bank of Spain, describes and analyses the potential and real scope of WFH in Spain. It also documents some differences in the implementation of WFH, due to geographical factors, gender, educational level and age group. The paper ends by listing a series of repercussions that WFH can have on productivity, workers’ quality of life, inequality, and the structure of cities.

The second article, by Eunjee Kwon of the University of Southern California (USC), focuses specifically on the effect of WFH on the structure of cities. More specifically, Kwon presents the results of a study carried out with Matt Delventhal of Claremont McKenna College and Andrii Parkhomenko (also USC), using a quantitative general equilibrium model to estimate how the city of Los Angeles would change if a third of its professional activity were carried out from home on a permanent basis.

In the third paper, Josep Maria Raya (Universitat Pompeu Fabra-APCE) explains how the pandemic and the possibilities of WFH have affected the real estate market in the area of Barcelona.