The regulation of the Sharing Economy: defining the role of regulatory authorities and collaborative platforms

Throughout the world, the rapid and recent growth of some collaborative platforms, such as Uber and Airbnb, have profoundly disrupted existing marketplaces and challenged regulatory authorities. This Master thesis first aims at discovering whether governments around the world should encourage the development of the Sharing Economy and if so, to which extent they should regulate it. For this purpose, our first part is dedicated to giving the reader a global understanding of what we consider to be the Sharing Economy and how it impacts its various stakeholders (i.e., consumers, service providers, incumbent companies and governments). By confronting those elements, the reader will able to decide whether the Sharing Economy should be fostered by governments. The second part will tackle the regulatory issues the Sharing Economy brings. Then, it will explore the regulatory measures that have been implemented to solve them up to now. More importantly, this part will highlight that the Sharing Economy should be regulated through the association of regulatory authorities and collaborative platforms, a duo whose initiatives would be more effective than the sole regulation from governments. This thesis ends with some recommendations governments, mainly in the European Union, could implement to regulate the Sharing Economy.