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The Sharing Economy: Definition, Measurement and its Relationship to Capitalism

Author

Listed:
  • Bergh, Andreas

    (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))

  • Funcke, Alexander

    (University of Pennsylvania)

  • Wernberg, Joakim

    (Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum and CIRCLE, Lund University)

Abstract

For the past decade, the sharing economy has not only grown but also expanded to cover a wide variety of different activities across the globe. Despite a lot of research, there is still no agreement on how to define and measure the sharing economy, and no consensus on whether the sharing economy is a part of or an alternative to a regular capitalist economy. This paper contributes by presenting a framework for classification of firms and services in three dimensions (decentralized supply, ad hoc matchmaking and microtransactions), thus effectively creating a definition of the sharing economy. Using clickstream data collected in 2016-2017, we show that the sharing economy consists of many services, but the distribution is highly skewed: Six percent of the services account for 90 percent of the traffic. Using cross-country regressions for 114 countries, we show that while the most important determinant of sharing economy usage is internet access, usage is significantly higher in countries with fewer regulation of capital, labor, and business. We conclude that the sharing enables new types of entrepreneurial efforts within the digitized capitalist economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Bergh, Andreas & Funcke, Alexander & Wernberg, Joakim, 2021. "The Sharing Economy: Definition, Measurement and its Relationship to Capitalism," Working Paper Series 1380, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1380
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic freedom; Sharing economy; Broadband; Capitalism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M20 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics - - - General
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O57 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries
    • P12 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Enterprises

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