Remote Work
Description: Remote work cut fraud.
Turns out it’s harder to cook the books when you can’t grab lunch with your co-conspirator!
The finding comes from economists John Barrios, Jessie Guo and Yanping Zhu, who sorted firms by how easily their work could move remote. At the firms best suited to it, financial misconduct fell by roughly half after 2020. The effect was strongest where the work was most collaborative, which is the tell. Fraud of this kind is a team sport, and distance raised the cost of keeping a team quiet.
Proximity builds trust. It also builds cover.
Barrios, J. M., Guo, J. J., & Zhu, Y. (2025). Fraud at a distance? How remote work shapes financial misconduct. *NBER Working Paper No. 34417*.
Follow @danielpink for behavioral science you can put to work the same day you read it.--
To find out more about Daniel Pink, his books, and view his resources, visit https://danpink.com Close description
Turns out it’s harder to cook the books when you can’t grab lunch with your co-conspirator!
The finding comes from economists John Barrios, Jessie Guo and Yanping Zhu, who sorted firms by how easily their work could move remote. At the firms best suited to it, financial misconduct fell by roughly half after 2020. The effect was strongest where the work was most collaborative, which is the tell. Fraud of this kind is a team sport, and distance raised the cost of keeping a team quiet.
Proximity builds trust. It also builds cover.
Barrios, J. M., Guo, J. J., & Zhu, Y. (2025). Fraud at a distance? How remote work shapes financial misconduct. *NBER Working Paper No. 34417*.
Follow @danielpink for behavioral science you can put to work the same day you read it.--
To find out more about Daniel Pink, his books, and view his resources, visit https://danpink.com Close description