The Sharing Economy: the New Capitalism and its Avatar

Abstracts should be written in English. Their body text should not exceed 500 words. The final paper should be scholarly written and follow the editorial guidelines below: - Microsoft Word document, 12-point Times New Roman font - Double-spaced - Chicago citation style - Footnotes, not endnotes - Maximum of 7000 words in length including abstract, footnotes and bibliography The Sharing Economy: the New Capitalism and its Avatar Georges Aoun & Léonel Matar The new capitalism, which is assimilated to a crowd based capitalism touching everyone and where the culture of trust is crucial for the consistency of the “Sharing Economy”, one of its major constituents. The Sharing imposes interaction among a multitude of stakeholders namely, the state, politicians, workers, businesses, trade unions, corporations and the public opinion. To conciliate between their different interests is a challenging task although at the same time it creates huge opportunities. Sharing is riddled by two problems: the precariousness of the job market, and the failure to protect consumers from the risks of unregulated markets. Because the old capitalism is struggling to create jobs and to improve the economic wellbeing in different countries, the new capitalism allowed businesses to spread all over the world. The challenge is to reconcile between the freedom to create and regulation for the protection of consumers’ right and the safety of the job market.