Risk in the Sharing Economy

Sharing economy promised a way of using property for the mutual benefit of owners and consumers, but in the last decade it has only worked to profit large commercial platforms. This book shows how institutions of risk management are part of this problem and offers a solution: collaborative risk structures.

The book uncovers risk as the missing element in accounts of property theory and sharing economy. Drawing on diverse insights from economic theory and legal studies, it explains how property and private law form a risk management infrastructure which reinforces private property, and examines the paralysing effects this has on sharing, by constraining it to extractive market relations and stifling its collaborative potential.

The book argues that overcoming these constraints is key to realising collaborative property and curbing the drawbacks of private ownership. It proposes institutional design principles and offers heuristic solutions such as radical uses of private law tools and insurance mechanisms to build a collaborative risk system capable of supporting more equitable and diversified forms of sharing.