effects of home working on productivity. 5 pre - covid, the lion ’ s share of these studies suggested home - working improved productivity. as one example, bloom et al ( 2015 ) conducted a randomised control trial in a call centre of a chinese travel company, randomly allocating some workers to work from home and others to work in the office, before measuring their respective performance. home - working improved worker productivity by around 13 % almost a day ’ s extra output, a massive gain. interestingly, after the trial the company allowed everyone who wanted to work from home to do so. that improved company performance by 22 %. these productivity effects do not appear to be fixed across different demographics, firms, tasks and sectors. 6 for example, studies suggest productivity gains from home - working are largest for creative tasks, perhaps reflecting the benefits of a quieter, less distracting home - working environment. 7 it is also worth saying that some of the evidence of productivity gains may be biased upwards by self - selection, with those opting to work from home more likely to be able to do so productively. when it comes to the productivity effects of home - working during the covid crisis, the evidence – while thinner – points in a different direction. survey evidence for japan suggests around a 7 % hit to labour productivity from home - working. 8 similar evidence can be found in studies of the uk. 9 survey data from the ons paints a similar picture, with almost a quarter of workers believing their productivity has been negatively affected by home - working, compared with only 12 % saying it has improved. 10 these differences in the productivity effects of home - working, pre and post - covid, are perhaps unsurprising. mandatory home - working thrust large numbers of workers into an alien working environment – their kitchens, bedrooms and attics. there was no option of self - selecting. that meant, for many, not only a worse working environment but a steep learning curve as they adapted to new ways of working. productivity, predictably, was hardest hit among those with least prior experience of home - working. 11 these shifts are also likely to affect other labour market and economic behaviour, such as labour market participation and wage growth. see, for example, mas and pallais bartik et al dutcher ( 2012 ). morikawa ( 2020 ). see felstead and reuschke ( 2020 ). ons ( 2020b ). morikawa ( 2020 ). all speeches

never taken place virtually in the more than 20 years prior to march. mpc deliberations have been no less effective, and mpc decisions no less expeditious, for this shift. what virtual meetings risk losing, however, is the capacity to explore uncharted territory, to share tacit knowledge and personal information. those informal between - meetings conversations are, in my experience, the bedrock of relationship - building and the key to trust – building. it is the loss of those informal opezzo and schwartz ( 2014 ). barrero et al ( 2020b ). all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches and @ boe _ pressoffice moments that has resulted in many of us running down our past stock of social capital for the past six months. this cannot be done indefinitely. i always knew that i picked up a lot of information from the unscheduled time between meetings, when informal and sometimes chance conversations take place. having now lived without them for 6 months, i now realise these informal non - meetings were often my main source of information. the informal chat in the 5 minute walk from the lift to my office often contained more useful knowledge than the subsequent one - hour meeting in my office. the other week i spoke to the bank ’ s new crop of graduates. when i was in their shoes, almost all of my knowledge came from informal conversations in the pub with my graduate cohort on their jobs, bosses and experiences, rather than from listening to talking heads like me. this year all of that is lost and, with it, a significant down - payment of social capital. those losses are being replicated among organisations right around the world. this social capital, once lost, will be difficult to reacquire. whether it is creative sparks being dampened, existing social capital being depleted or new social capital being lost, these are real costs and costs which would be expected to grow, silently but steadily, over time. they weigh on the other side of the ledger when it comes to assessing the case for home - working. they cast doubt on whether it will lead to the promised land of improved productivity and greater happiness. if you asked me if i am happier working from home, i genuinely would not know. i do not miss the commute. but i feel acutely the loss of working relationships and external stimuli – the chance conversations, listening to very different people with very different lived