Creative Destruction And The Sharing Economy

While creative destruction and disruptive innovation change the entrepreneurial landscape; regulation – especially regulation of sectorial markets and competition regulation – can delay this change or even bring it to a halt. Uber plays an active role between these two forces: first as an agent of creative destruction and then possibly in championing regulation on its own terms. Grounded in a particular understanding of the economic concept of the market as a series of processes, this book explores the implications of creative destruction, competition regulation and the role that businesses play. Instead of discussing these relations in a purely abstract manner, this book uses Uber as a case study.

Leading social scientists explore pressing issues--monopoly and inequality, growth and innovation, climate change and fraying social safety nets--through the lens of creative destruction. Far more than a theory of capitalist dynamics, creative destruction proves an important idea for illuminating a wide range of social and political challenges.

From one of the world’s leading economists and his coauthors, a cutting-edge analysis of what drives economic growth and a blueprint for prosperity under capitalism. Crisis seems to follow crisis. Inequality is rising, growth is stagnant, the environment is suffering, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed every crack in the system. We hear more and more calls for radical change, even the overthrow of capitalism. But the answer to our problems is not revolution. The answer is to create a better capitalism by understanding and harnessing the power of creative destruction—innovation that disrupts, but that over the past two hundred years has also lifted societies to previously unimagined prosperity. To explain, Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin, and Simon Bunel draw on cutting-edge theory and evidence to examine today’s most fundamental economic questions, including the roots of growth and inequality, competition and globalization, the determinants of health and happiness, technological revolutions, secular stagnation, middle-income traps, climate change, and how to recover from economic shocks. They show that we owe our modern standard of living to innovations enabled by free-market capitalism. But we also need state intervention with the appropriate checks and balances to simultaneously foster ongoing economic creativity, manage the social disruption that innovation leaves in its wake, and ensure that yesterday’s superstar innovators don’t pull the ladder up after them to thwart tomorrow’s. A powerful and ambitious reappraisal of the foundations of economic success and a blueprint for change, The Power of Creative Destruction shows that a fair and prosperous future is ultimately ours to make.

What is creative destruction? Creative destruction, what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called “the essential fact about capitalism," describes change or disruption in the economy caused by innovations that replace traditional technologies and practices. Creative destruction is a force so powerful that it has not only shaped economies but also politics, culture, and social relations. In clear and accessible prose, Dalton and Logan illustrate the nature and varieties of creative destruction, how it is central to innovation and entrepreneurship, and why it is important for economic growth. With in-depth case studies of how Netflix challenged and displaced Blockbuster, and how Uber and other ride-sharing companies are disrupting traditional taxi services, this book examines how economies, societies, and cultures change due to the innovation and experimentation that is central to the prosperity of free societies.

Analysis of the place of art in the global market economy. The author argues that, despite the homogenizing dangers, globalization actually contributes to cultural diversity, even promoting and reviving traditional cultures. Review in: Journal of cultural economics. 28(2004)1(.81-88).

This book employs a variety of economic and philosophical methodologies in order to discover the philosophical implications of creative destruction, competition regulation, and the role that businesses or market agents play. Instead of discussing these relations in a purely abstract manner, Schneider uses Uber to illuminate important matters in economic and philosophical thought. Schneider tells the following story: While creative destruction and disruptive innovation change the entrepreneurial landscape, regulation--especially the regulation of sectorial markets and competition regulation— delay this change or even bring it to a halt. Uber, as an agent in the market, is not just an object moved by these two opposing forces. Rather, it plays an active role, first as an agent of creative destruction and then in championing regulations on its own terms.

Transactions have always taken place. For hundreds of years that ‘place’ was a market or, more recently, a shopping mall. But in the past two decades these physical locations have increasingly been replaced by their virtual counterparts – online platforms. Here, author Michael C. Munger demonstrates how these platforms act as matchmakers or middlemen, a role traders have adopted since the very first exchanges thousands of years ago. The difference today is that the matchmakers often play no direct part in buying or selling anything – they just help buyers and sellers find each other. Their major contribution has been to reduce the costs of organising and completing purchases, rentals or exchanges. The Sharing Economy: Its Pitfalls and Promises contends that the key role of online platforms is to create reductions in transaction costs and it highlights the importance of three ‘Ts’ - triangulation, transfer and trust – in bringing down those costs.

“An insightful guide to the forces shaping our economy” that explores the far-ranging implications of the shift to crowd-based capitalism—with case studies on Uber, Airbnb, and others (Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google) Sharing isn’t new. Giving someone a ride, having a guest in your spare room, running errands for someone, participating in a supper club—these are not revolutionary concepts. What is new, in the “sharing economy,” is that you are not helping a friend for free; you are providing these services to a stranger for money. In this book, Arun Sundararajan, an expert on the sharing economy, explains the transition to what he describes as “crowd-based capitalism”—a new way of organizing economic activity that may supplant the traditional corporate-centered model. As peer-to-peer commercial exchange blurs the lines between the personal and the professional, how will the economy, government regulation, what it means to have a job, and our social fabric be affected? Drawing on extensive research and numerous real-world examples—including Airbnb, Lyft, Uber, Etsy, TaskRabbit, France's BlaBlaCar, China’s Didi Kuaidi, and India’s Ola, Sundararajan explains the basics of crowd-based capitalism. He describes the intriguing mix of “gift” and “market” in its transactions, demystifies emerging blockchain technologies, and clarifies the dizzying array of emerging on-demand platforms. He considers how this new paradigm changes economic growth and the future of work. Will we live in a world of empowered entrepreneurs who enjoy professional flexibility and independence? Or will we become disenfranchised digital laborers scurrying between platforms in search of the next wedge of piecework? Sundararajan highlights the important policy choices and suggests possible new directions for self-regulatory organizations, labor law, and funding our social safety net.