The sharing economy

GLOBAL INVESTOR 2.15 — 15
Besides other indicators, the economic
performance of an enterprise
can be measured by its value
added, i.e. its production value minus
the value of intermediate inputs. Or more
precisely, an enterprise’s value added includes
employee compensation, tax payments, interest
payments, rental payments as well as
owner profits (i.e. national income). It is a pure
output measure, and excludes factors such
as a consumer’s satisfaction with a product.
To measure the economic perform ance of a
country, one has to sum up the value added
of all domestic enterprises. To calculate a
country’s gross domestic product (GDP), one
takes only domestically produced goods and
services into account, subtracting subsidies
and adding taxes.
The European System of Accounts (ESA)
2010 considers more than just businesses to
measure GDP: other productive sectors, such
as public administration, unpaid household
production (housework, child care, etc.) and
parts of the shadow economy, are incorporated
as well. The value added of these sectors
normally has to be estimated either because
activities are not observed, or there is
no production value.
Including non-business sectors and shadow
markets when measuring GDP makes
perfect sense. For example, although usually
unobserved, black markets account for a
substantial share of the economy and absorb
a non-negligible share of the workforce and
resources. Thus, by taking shadow markets
and non-business sectors into account, GDP
comes closer to reflecting true economic performance.
Sharing activities more difficult to measure
Purely socially motivated components of sharing,
such as spending time with someone (e.g.
via rentafriend.com) to increase quality of life,
are necessarily excluded from GDP. However,
sharing for money, or sharing activities that
are similar to business-to-consumer activities
are relevant to economic performance, though
only some of them are already measured by
today’s GDP. For example, Internet platforms
such as freelancer.com match workers and
enterprises for project-based cooperation. In
this case, these projects’ value added is measured
by GDP. The booking commission that
Blablacar takes for car sharing is a part of
employee compensation and owner profit.
These components of car-sharing activities
also find their way into GDP. However, the
payment that a non-professional Airbnb >
01_Willingness to share a certain item
Sharing becomes more and more common, but there are differences among some goods or services
and others. Shown is the global average of individuals willing to share the respective item or service.
Source: Nielsen Global Survey of Share Communities
15
%
17
%
21
%
02_Sectors with relevant sharing activities as percentage of GDP
About half of total GDP is composed of sectors which are significantly affected by sharing, with trade
(both retail and wholesale), transportation and services being the main categories. Source: Credit Suisse, Eurostat
56%
Others
Home
Furniture
Car
23
%
26
%
28
%
Power tools
Lessons / Services
Electronics
2%
Accommodation
and food
7%
Transport
and storage
15%
Trade
10%
Real estate,
scientific and
technical
activities
4%
Insurance
6%
Financial services