Antitrust Treatment of Sharing Economy Actors Viewed through New Institutional Economics Lens. The Case of Uber
Abstract
The so-called ‘Sharing Economy’ brought about some new challenges to the application of competition/antitrust law to the entities participating in it. Uber and the so-called uberization of economy are mentioned as prime examples of the respective issues.
Competition law struggled how to appropriately tackle some of the issues brought about by Uber’s new ‘business model’. In some jurisdictions Uber was challenged as a dominant company engaging in pricing abuses.
In others its model was under scrutiny as a device coordinating price fixing among Uber drivers, i.e., as some sort of ‘hub-and-spoke’ collusive conspiracy. It has been also argued that rather than a horizontal collusion facilitating device, it could a prohibited vertical price fixing scheme (resale price maintenance) when Uber requires its drivers to follow fixed prices set by an Uber algorithm.
In this connection, one of the key issues dealt with was the position of Uber drivers within the Uber eco-system.