HKS Affiliated Authors

Excerpt

Peer-to-Peer Rental Markets: Some Thoughts on the “Sharing Economy.” Richard Zeckhauser, January 21, 2016, Paper. "Recent technological advances and entrepreneurial efforts have created a number of new peer-to-peer rental markets in which owners can rent out their durable goods. We consider the emergence of such a market and determine the market clearing rental rate, the patterns of trade and the surplus unlocked for different types of consumers. Our analysis considers both a short-run, before consumers can revise their ownership decisions and a long-run, in which they can. A survey of consumers finds broad support for the modeling conventions used—namely that ownership is determined by a forward-looking evaluation of planned usage. We also explore the factors that are permitting these new markets to flourish ..." Link