The geography of the sharing economy in Europe

The sharing economy, intended as the creation of new markets for idle resources managed by digital intermediary platforms, is spreading in most economies. This paper offers new evidence on the geography of this phenomenon in the NUTS2 regions of the EU27 + UK by proposing a methodology to identify its stages and intensity of development. Results suggest that the sharing economy develops unevenly across countries and across regions, highlighting exceptional cases of mismatch between the intensity of the sharing economy and the most favourable socio-economic context conditions and warning against the possible detrimental effects of its development for wage inequalities.