Of course, if a remote hire is 20% cheaper then that's a net win. And in many cities the cost of providing an office alone can be that big, even without the higher salaries often needed for in person workers...
Oh and this is:
* In India
* For newly hired workers
* Doing data entry
* Randomly assigned to home/office not choosing to be there
From the paper's abstract: "We conduct an RCT in the data entry sector in India
that exogenously allocates workers to the home or office. We find that the productivity of
workers randomly assigned to working from home is 18% lower than those in the office."
Oh and this is:
* In India
* For newly hired workers
* Doing data entry
* Randomly assigned to home/office not choosing to be there
More heat, but still no actual light.
https://archive.ph/edzP9