Otis Alexander

Important paper showing the gains to mothers and society from WFH. A 10% increase in WFH is shown to increase mothers employment by 1%. This is particularly true in professions which are more family unfriendly, like finance and marketing. Two implications: 1) WFH is driving faster economic growth by increasing the labor-supply of mothers. This is a huge benefit to society, and likely one reason for the post-pandemic surge in US economic growth. 2) WFH supports children's development by allowing parents to spend more time with them. This provides individual family benefits, and also wider social and economic benefits. So the big-name CEOs and Politicians claiming WFH is damaging growth have got it 100% wrong. WFH is likely powering the current economic boom by increasing labor supply and productivity, while also improving personal and family time. Paper: drive.google.com/file/d/1Z1J…

New paper studying the impact of 137 Return to Office mandates on S&P500 firms from 2020-2023. Three key results: 1) RTO mandates are more likely in firms with poor recent stock performance, and in those with powerful male CEOs. 2) Glassdoor data finds RTO mandates significantly reduce employee ratings for job satisfaction, work-life balance and senior management. 3) There is no significant impact of RTO mandates on either firm profitability or firm stock-returns. My interpretation is that RTO mandates are often a response to poor recent company performance, perhaps adopted by under-pressure CEOs. These RTO mandates upset employees, but do not appear to yield performance benefits in return. Paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.…