Shifting to Telework and Firms' Location: Does Telework Make Our Society Efficient?

Abstract: Although it has been suggested that the shift from on-site work to telework will change the city structure, the mechanism of this change is not clear. This study clarifies how the location of firms changes when the cost of teleworking decreases and how this affects the urban economy. The two main results obtained are as follows. (i) The expansion of teleworking causes firms to be located closer to urban centers or closer to urban fringes. (ii) Teleworking makes urban production more efficient and cities more compact. This is the first paper to show that two empirical studies can be represented in a unified theoretical model and that existing studies obtained by simulation can be explained analytically.