This paper investigates how working from home affects employees’ work effort. Employees who have the possibility to work from home have a high autonomy in scheduling and organizing their work and are therefore assumed to have a higher intrinsic motivation. Thus, we expect working from home to positively influence work effort of employees. We introduce a theoretical model that analyzes whether intrinsic motivation influences the impact of working from home on employees’ work effort. To account for the self-selection into working locations, we use an instrumental variable (IV) estimation strategy. Our empirical results indicate that working from home has a positive influence on employees’ work effort. In addition, we show that working from home indeed increases intrinsic motivation and thus employees’ work effort. Moreover, we find that the frequency of working from home also matters. The more frequently employees work from home, the higher the work effort they provide is.

中文翻译：

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居家办公

本文研究在家工作如何影响员工的工作量。有可能在家工作的员工在安排和组织工作方面具有较高的自主权，因此被认为具有更高的内在动力。因此，我们希望在家工作对员工的工作产生积极影响。我们引入一种理论模型，该模型分析内在动机是否会影响在家工作对员工工作努力的影响。为了考虑到工作地点的自我选择，我们使用了一种工具变量（IV）估计策略。我们的经验结果表明，在家工作对员工的工作量有积极影响。此外，我们证明在家工作确实增加了内在动力，从而增加了员工的工作量。此外，我们发现在家工作的频率也很重要。员工在家工作的频率越高，他们提供的工作量就越大。