25/03/26
- Documents de travail
While previous studies examine the impact of telework on consumption either near residences or workplaces, the net effect on local demand remains unclear. Using high-frequency mobile phone and card transaction data from Lyon, France's second-largest metropolitan area, we identify two causal demand shocks: a 1pp increase in work-from-home presence raises local spending by 1%, and a 1pp decrease in workplace presence reduces spending by 1.3%. Aggregating these opposing effects, we find a small and statistically insignificant decline in weekday offline consumption, suggesting that most spending shifts from workplace to home. We find that working from home is associated with a moderate spatial shift of spending from urban cores to residential suburbs, and a slight sectoral reallocation from restaurants toward food retail and bars.
