Yes, of course you have to consider the usual difficulties with regard to contracting. Call centres are clearly an industry where it is easy to measure output but the result still surprised me with its magnitude.

Still, the manufacturing wave has waned as an employment tool and the knowledge industries are upon us. That fits in quite well with working from home. Journalism works well this way, particularly for women with children. The other thing working for this type is the much more relaxed employment conditions that allow flexibility.

An example of an exciting new potential home industry is 3D printing.. that could take care of the quality issues and give us a lot of innovative work.

JC

Lamoreaux, Raff andTemin (2003: 412-3) write,

“[h]owever, the enormous coordination problems that this system entailed (for ex-
ample, unsupervised weavers working in their homes turning out fabrics of vastly
varying qualities) spurred manufacturers to reconcentrate production in factories as
soon as technological innovation in the form of the power loom enabled them to
expand capacity sufficiently.”

In other words, one size does not fit all and productivity gains will occur only in some industries. The nature of the work and the ability to measure “effort” and thus control for moral hazard will be a factor in determining the success of putting-out.