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  5. Workplace Flexibility
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Workplace Flexibility

Paper Session

Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (EST)

Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Room 306
Hosted By: Econometric Society
  • Chair: Emma Harrington, University of Virginia

Twenty-Five Hours in a Day: On Job Flexibility and the Intrahousehold Allocation of Time and Money

Iris Kesternich
,
Hamburg University
Frederic Vermeulen
,
University of Leuven
Alexander Wintzéus
,
University of Leuven

Abstract

Flexible work schedules and telecommuting may help to improve the combination of work and family. An open question is whether job flexibility can increase the well-being of the children, which depends on parental time spent on childcare. We propose a rich collective model describing the intrahousehold allocation of time and money treating children’s well-being as a domestically produced good. Job flexibility may influence this domestic production process as a production shifter, capturing that flexible jobs can ease constraints on childcare time. We apply our model to a unique sample of Dutch couples with children and find that job flexibility significantly impacts the production of children’s well-being. While the results indicate that more job flexibility for fathers may help parents to balance work and family, they imply that more job flexibility for mothers may not allow parents to achieve the same. The overall implications for children’s well-being appear negative, albeit limited.

Wage Differentials and the Price of Workplace Flexibility

Linh Thùy Tô
,
Boston University
Neil Thakral
,
Brown University

Abstract

This paper studies the distribution of workplace flexibility in the labor market and its sources. We collect information on which workers have workplace flexibility along three dimensions, flexible location, flexible scheduling of hours, and flexible total number of hours worked. Low-wage workers can choose to work part-time more flexibly but have a significant disadvantage when it comes to flexible location and scheduling. We overcome challenges in measuring individual-level willingness-to-pay (WTP) by using an adaptive discrete choice experiment, finding WTP for all three dimensions of workplace flexibility to be relatively flat across the wage distribution. Differences in preferences thus cannot account for the facts, suggesting that workers may face unequal compensating prices to obtain the same workplace amenity. Using a structural model of compensating differentials, we quantify that unequal amenity prices explain 7.2% of wage inequality and 8% of total utility inequality. The results highlight that the unequal distribution of workplace flexibility contributes to the widening of wage inequality even in the presence of compensating differentials.

Return to Office and the Tenure Distribution

David Geert Laurie Van Dijcke
,
University of Michigan
Florian Felix Gunsilius
,
Emory University
Austin Wright
,
University of Chicago

Abstract

With the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, debates over return-to-office mandates have intensified, though their economic implications are not fully understood. Using 260 million resumes matched to company data, we analyze the impact of these policies on employee tenure and seniority at three large U.S. tech companies: Microsoft, SpaceX, and Apple. Employing a distributional synthetic controls framework, we estimate a reduction in tenure and seniority at firms returning to the office. To do so, we extend the distributional synthetic controls framework by developing and proving the validity of bootstrap-based uniform confidence bands, enabling researchers to conduct rigorous simultaneous inference across entire distributions. Our findings suggest return-to-office mandates may drive senior employees to competitors, posing a risk to firm productivity and innovation.

Discussant(s)
Yana Gallen
,
University of Chicago
Alex Bell
,
Georgia State University
David Van Dijcke
,
University of Michigan
JEL Classifications
  • J22 - Time Allocation and Labor Supply