Online Platform Providers in the Sharing Economy: Emergence of New Service Suppliers?

Abstract

The ‘sharing economy’ has grown dramatically with the development of online platforms, challenging both domestic and international economic structure and related policies. While the issue of governance surrounding the online platform industry has become an important issue, thereby necessitating more discussion, even in the WTO, there remains the structural incompatibility of online platform providers with the current international trade regime and the continuing debate regarding how to classify and categorize platform services and their suppliers. This study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the status of online platform providers under the international trade regime, focusing on the matters of classification and the likeness of online platform providers based on the norms of trade in services. The article further examines the next question of the applicability of existing international trade norms, including WTO and free trade agreements together with the overview of newly introduced trade norms for online platform providers. Although there are still unresolved questions regarding various kinds of online platforms, the present work urges a continuous effort into defining applicable norms for the sharing economy within the established trade regulatory framework for legal certainty and predictability. Sharing economy, online platform, GATS, FTA, classification, likeness

The sharing economy and collaborative consumption: Strategic issues and global entrepreneurial opportunities

“…1 and Table 2 ). At the same time, sharing and CC-based models and digital systems continue to disrupt the mainstream business world and their operations (see de Oliveira and Tello-Gamarra 2020 ; Eckhardt et al 2019 ; Filippas 2020 ; Hur et al 2020 ). These activities lead to “collaborative lifestyles,” sharing, and consumer exchanges in consumption (Botsman and Rogers 2010b , p. 30; Moraes et al 2012 ; Richter et al 2017 ; Viglia 2020 ).…”

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