3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
correspondent study. Poll results could be helpful to implement pertinent policies. Official
figures and statistics about the public’s acceptance of the Sharing Economy in Luxembourg are
missing. One reason is the methodological difficulty in tracking and measuring peer-to-peer
sharing activities, especially those relying on non-monetary exchanges. Further analysis is
required in this domain to enable the integration of value added generated by activities based
on new economic models into national accounts by the national statistical office (STATEC) and
to consider these activities in the calculation of the economic performance of Luxembourg.
Although peer-to-peer exchanges are not a new phenomenon, digitalization of the economy
increases the scale of these transactions and makes related measurement issues an urgent
priority. Underlying activities have been traditionally captured in national statistics using
numerous approaches related to the informal and non-observed economy. The use of
intermediation websites may provide a solution to measure generated value in a more accurate
way. To this effect, Luxembourg could explore the feasibility of using data collected by
intermediary service providers to improve the estimates of activities of unincorporated
enterprises. The topic also contains a fiscal issue as precise tracking and measuring is a
prerequisite for subjecting these activities to the tax code and allowing the state to collect
taxes.
Concerning the measurement of GDP, another issue must be broached: free assets produced by
users. While using (free) digital products, vast amounts of data are generated. This data
represents a value asset for the provider as it is collected and commercially exploited (data
mining, Big Data analytics, sale to data brokers, etc.). The value added by the users is difficult to
evaluate. When the provider is registered in the same country as the user, there should be no
impact on total GDP as the whole value is generated in the same national territory and the
provider’s activity is likely to be captured in national accounts. However, when provider and
user are not registered in the same country, there may be an impact on GDP as part of the
value chain – namely the value generated by the user is not accounted for in the country it was
generated. A related topic is the creation of public goods using labor provided for free. Typical
examples in this domain are open source software (e.g. Linux) and knowledge (e.g. Wikipedia).
Within the current accounting framework, the services provided by prosumers and the time
they spend on developing or improving the public good do not enter into GDP.
The creation – within a public administration – of a directorate in charge of the Sharing
Economy and all related issues could help to bundle the efforts and deal with the different
aspects of the Sharing Economy in a target-oriented way.
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