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Summary: The growth of remote work has led to localities competing for remote workers by leveraging location-specific attributes, as exemplified by Tulsa Remote, which increased community engagement, income, and entrepreneurship, thereby benefiting both the community and remote workers and encouraging their willingness to stay.
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Literature: how can firms create and capture value from workers with general human capital: (1) increasing the worker's productivity at the focal firm relative to other firms (2) increasing the worker's relative utility of staying at the focal firm -> translate the ideas developed in the strategic human capital literature into the context of geographic competition for remote workers: (1) increase the value created by remote workers to the locality (increasing local economic activity or community engagement) (2) increase the relative utility (either from pecuniary or non-pecuniary benefits) that remote workers experience from living in the locality relative to the expected utility of living elsewhere
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Tulas Remote program: pay remote workers $10k to relocate to Tulsa, OK for at least one year, and provides a working space, integration into the local community and entrepreneurial ecosystem, and housing assistance.
-Launched in 2019 to attract individuals with high economic potential to the city, Tulsa Remote received over 20,000 application and relocated nearly 2000 individuals by mid-2023, with 75% staying at least two year
- Mixed-methods approach: a survey to measure remote workers' pre- and post-Tulsa remote behaviors and work/socioeconomic characteristics that would reflect potentially location-specific attributes, as well as the willingness to stay in an area.
-Difference-in-differences design to estimate the impact of Tulsa Remote on its participants, comparing changes within treated individuals before and after the Tulsa Remote program to changes within a variety of "near-treated" individuals over the same time frame
-First benchmark group: individuals who were "rejected applicants" to Tulsa Remote
-Second benchmark group: individuals who applied and were accepted by the Tulsa Remote program but eventually declined the opportunity to move, who are "near-Tulsa remoters"
-Third benchmark group: individuals who applied, were invited to move, accepted the offer, but have yet to effectively move to Tulsa. This is the group of "soon-to-be Tulsa remoters"
- Some notes:
-Figure 1: the map "relocation incentive program in the US"
-Table 2: the table "Summary of treatment and benchmark group"