Emma Harrington

Remote Work

During her stay in Munich, Emma Harrington will continue her remote-work research. She will present the “The Power of Proximity to Coworkers” that studies how physical proximity impacts mentorship and immediate output among software engineers. She will also present earlier-stage work about how the rise of remote work has impacted gender gaps in the labor market, particularly in careers that are demanding on workers’ time.

A labor economist, Emma Harrington, researches remote work and systemic discrimination in the criminal justice system. In her research, she has investigated remote work's consequences on workers' productivity, on-the-job training, and career progression in the context of a Fortune 500 retailer. In addition to remote-work topics, her current projects evaluate the extent to which prosecutors in criminal courts either check or pass through racial biases introduced by police.

Ms. Harrington’s research on remote work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, National Public Radio, Bloomberg, Vox, and other media outlets. She has co-organized the Remote Work Conference at Stanford University, a session at the American Economic Association meetings, and a session at the Society of Labor Economists Meetings. Her papers have had revisions requested at the American Journal of Economics: Applied Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics.

Emma Harrington is an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia and is an affiliate of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. She received her PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 2021 and did a postdoctoral fellowship in Princeton University’s Industrial Relations Section for the 2021-2022 academic year. Before arriving at the University of Virginia, Harrington was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Iowa.