Companies in the so-called sharing economy (and gig economy) like Lyft, Uber, Air B’n’B, Kickstarter, ZipCar and TaskRabbit are among the world's most well-known most valuable companies today. Most of these companies were founded after 2000 and had their breakthrough in the last decade.
However, almost all business models and service offers used in the so-called sharing economy/gig economy have historical antecedents. Services similar to those offered by for example Uber and Air B’n’ already existed in the pre-industrial economy. The same applies to services within co-working and peer to peer lending.
In this paper, we examine the historical roots of the sharing (and gig) economy. We find that it is rather the 20th century that was an anomaly in terms of the extent of sector: Before the last century, these types of services were common.
We also find that factors that affect the relative extent of the sector are transaction costs, where lower transaction costs lead to a relatively larger sharing economy (and where the Internet in recent has contributed to lower such costs), the wealth of society (lower wealth leads to a larger sharing economy sector), the extent of capital markets (extensive and well-functioning capital markets leads to a smaller sharing economy sector) and moral and cultural norms regarding e.g. self-employment, privacy and trust.