The sharing economy and urban property rights

The sharing economy is a recent urban phenomenon. This paper explores its impact on urban property rights as well as their long-term interaction. The starting point of the analysis is the spatial matching condition, which requires the owner of a durable good to be spatially close to the renter to execute a deal. More generally, it asks for owners to live close to renters. The short-term impact is that the segregation effect of private property rights in the city is ameliorated. In the long term, an active P2P market will become an important urban amenity, which might be capitalized into property value. In this sense, it contributes to the agglomeration economy that reinforces private property rights at macro level.