On June 9th, the Federal Trade Commission hosted an excellent workshop on “The ‘Sharing’ Economy: Issues Facing Platforms, Participants, and Regulators,” which included 4 major panels and dozens of experts speaking about these important issues. It was my great pleasure to be part of the 4th panel of the day on the policy implications of the sharing economy. Along with my Mercatus colleagues Christopher Koopman and Matt Mitchell, I submitted a 20-page filing to the Commission summarizing our research findings in this area. (We also released a major new working paper that same day on, “How the Internet, the Sharing Economy, and Reputational Feedback Mechanisms Solve the ‘Lemons Problem.’” (All Mercatus Center research on sharing economy issues can be found on this page and we plan on releasing additional papers in coming months.)
The FTC has now posted the videos from their workshop and down below I have embedded my particular panel. My remarks begin around the 5-minute mark of the video.
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