REGULATING THE SHARING ECONOMY: A LAW AND ECONOMY PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Home-sharing platforms such as Airbnb, Inc. provide digital peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces that allow users to rent out an empty lodging space in their homes to others for a brief period. While the P2P-based short-term rental (STR) industry creates economic benefits in some respects, there are concerns about the associated negative externalities. To address the concerns, there has been a growing interest to regulate the STR industry. This research focuses on law and economics, as well as sharing economy, and contributes to this interest by empirically investigating the effects of imposing regulations on STR. Three empirical studies were conducted.