Reengineering the Sharing Economy

The current sharing economy suffers from system-wide deficiencies even as it produces distinctive benefits and advantages for some participants. The first generation of sharing markets has left us to question: Will there be any workers in the sharing economy? Can we know enough about these technologies to regulate them? Is there any way to avoid the monopolization of assets, information, and wealth? Using convergent, transdisciplinary perspectives, this volume examines the challenge of reengineering a sharing economy that is more equitable, democratic, sustainable, and just. The volume enhances the reader’s capacity for integrating applicable findings and theories in business, law and social science into ethical engineering design and practice. At the same time, the book helps explain how technological innovations in the sharing economy create value for different stakeholders and how they impact society at large. Reengineering the Sharing Economy is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Babak Heydari is an Associate Professor in the College of Engineering at Northeastern University. He is the director of the MAGICS LAB and an affiliate faculty at the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, and the Network Science Institute.

Ozlem Ergun is the COE Distinguished Professor in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the Northeastern University College of Engineering.

Rashmi Dyal-Chand is Professor of Law and affiliate faculty at the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University. She is the author of Collaborative Capitalism in American Cities: Reforming Urban Market Regulations (2018) and co-editor of Legal Scholarship for the Urban Core: From the Ground Up (2019).

Yakov Bart is Associate Professor of Marketing and Patrick F. and Helen C. Walsh Research Professor at D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. He is the co-founder and faculty director of the Digital, Analytics, Technology and Auto-mation (DATA) Initiative and core faculty at interdisciplinary Institute for Experiential Artificial Intelligence at Northeastern University.