Abstract: Relative to remote work, working downtown facilitates valuable interactions with other in-office workers, but entails commuting costs. The resulting coordination mechanism can lead to multiple stationary equilibria with varying levels of remote work. Temporary reductions in commuters, as in the COVID-19 pandemic, can then lead to persistently large fractions of remote workers. Cell-phone-based mobility data for the U.S. shows that commuting trips in the largest cities, which are more likely to exhibit multiplicity, have stabilized at only 60% of pre-pandemic levels, while they are fully back in smaller cities. Cities with permanently low commuting experience average welfare losses of 2.3%.

Abstract: We provide theory and evidence on the relationship between globalization and pandemics. Business travel facilitates trade and travel leads to human interactions that transmit disease. Trade-motivated travel generates an epidemiological externality across countries. If infections lead to deaths, or reduce individual labor supply, we establish a general equilibrium social distancing effect, whereby increases in relative prices in unhealthy countries reduce travel to those countries. If agents internalize the threat of infection, we show that their behavioral responses lead to a reduction in travel that is larger for higher-trade-cost locations, which initially reduces the ratio of trade to output.

Appendix

Replication Files