Concetto Paolo VINCI | Projects

SHARING ECONOMY

The right framework for analysing sharing economy phenomena is a necessary step to fully describe the main economic problems. Insights from the previous classification suggest some interesting research areas. All the peer-to-peer markets organised through platforms face a problem concerning the best way to build trust among peers (Einav et al., 2015), which in turn raises the question of consumer protection in the peer-to-peer exchange. While business-to-consumer exchanges are regulated through legal quality standards, regulations and a full consumer rights definition, P2P markets do not currently have any legal prescription. This fact also implies fiscal inequality between the two kinds of market, and the B2C actors can be afraid of unfair competition. Moreover, many peer-to-peer platforms become rapidly quasi-monopolistic in their area of interest, often crowding out non-profit networks of private agents; at the same time, the bulk of unprofessional suppliers approaching the market through sharing platforms have a strong competitive advantage over traditional providers of the same good/service, simply because no regulations or taxes are imposed on these private activities. The consumer protection issue becomes a labour protection problem in platforms encouraging shared labour, which can be viewed as a new way to reallocate workers coming out of the traditional labour market, but without the legal and monetary guarantees usually associated with the traditional labour market. Another interesting aspect of a sharing economy is its implication for growth, in the question of whether a sharing economy has supporting or crowding effects on growth; this theme is particularly relevant when considering the ability of professional networks to extract profits from the private sector simply by bypassing taxes, regulations and insurance and cutting down the costs associated with a traditional business. An accessory issue is the measurement of a sharing economy in its recordingin the GDP measurement. This list—surely incomplete—throws light on a potential issue of interest to economic studies, where many aspects concerning specific markets of interest for the sharing economy can be added.