While prior studies have examined how telework affects consumer spending either near residences or workplaces separately, its net economic effect, and whether it reduces or merely redistributes local demand, remains debated. Using high-frequency mobile phone and card transaction data from Lyon, France’s second-largest metropolitan area, we causally identify dual demand shocks: a 1pp increase in working-from-home raises local spending by 1%, while a 1pp increase in workplace absence reduces it by 1.3%. Aggregating these opposing shocks yields a small, statistically insignificant decline in weekday offline consumption, consistent with near-complete substitution of spending from workplace to home but a sharp decline in transaction frequency. This reflects a spatial shift from urban cores to residential suburbs and a sectoral reallocation from restaurants to food retail and bars.
Daily effects of telework on in‑store consumption in the Lyon functional urban area
