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90 Tul. L. Rev. 241 (2015-2016)

handle is hein.journals/tulr90 and id is 271 raw text is: TULANE LAW REVIEW VOL. 90 DECEMBER2015 No. 2 Regulating Sharing: The Sharing Economy as an Alternative Capitalist System Rashmi Dyal-Chand* In a county where good fences ar believed to make good neighbors, sharing is surprisingly in vogue. The success of sharing economy icons such as Airbnb and Uber has generated a wve of commentary on the cultural, philosopical, and social impacts of sharing In the legal realm, however, a &sturmirg &ssonance exists between excitement over this seemingly new ay of doing business and regulatory flounderng. Is Airbnb a hotel chain, a rental agency, or a website provider? Is Lber a taxicab service employing hundreds of dr'vers or a developer of an app? These questions remain unanswered. Yetpolicymakers cannot regulate the shanhg economy without answering them. This legal dissonance is caused by the failure to recognize the sharing economy as a distinct capitalist system that requires new regulatory approaches. To date, both regulators and scholars have evaluated sharing against a Coasian norm that assumes the dominance of the traditional finm, the primacy of private ownersh, and the asymmetrical leveraging of information. This approach obscures the ansiers to basic, but crucial, questions about how the sharing economy operates. Using vaneties of capitabhi theory this Article argues that the sharing economy is a nascent form ofa coordinated market economy, a form that flourishes in some parts ofEurope. The key task in regulating this alternative capital'st system is to understand and regulate the institutions that support it. On the basis of this theoretical insight, this Article proposes a regulatory model that pnontizes an mquuy into the institutions of the sharing economy as a means to answer the questions vexing policy makers. It also applies the model to two of the * © 2015 Rashmi Dyal-Chand. Professor, Northeastern University School of Law. I am grateful to Libby Adler, Aziza Ahmed, Scott Cummings, Nestor Davidson, Peter Enrich, Benjamin Ericson, Kristin Madison, Daniel Medwed, Robin Paul Malloy, Jeremy Paul, Joel Quick, Rachel Rosenbloom, James C. Smith, Kara Swanson, and participants in the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Association for Law, Property, and Society at the University of Georgia School of Law, the Sharing Economy/Sharing City Conference at Fordham Law School, and the faculty workshop at Temple University School of Law for very helpful comments. Amanda Bradley, Kimberly Elkin, and Joel Quick provided indispensable research assistance, and Elliott Hibbler of the Northeastern University Law Library provided tremendous research support.

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