Work‐from‐anywhere : The productivity effects of geographic flexibility

Abstract Research Summary An emerging form of remote work allows employees to work‐from‐anywhere , so that the worker can choose to live in a preferred geographic location. While traditional work‐from‐home (WFH) programs offer the worker temporal flexibility, work‐from‐anywhere (WFA) programs offer both temporal and geographic flexibility. WFA should be viewed as a nonpecuniary benefit likely to be preferred by workers who would derive greater utility by moving from their current geographic location to their preferred location. We study the effects of WFA on productivity at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and exploit a natural experiment in which the implementation of WFA was driven by…