Does the sharing economy hurt the traditional economy? Evidence in the hospitality industry from the United States

A burgeoning sharing economy has recently opened vast niches of opportunities for virtually every economic sector from service to knowledge creation and even manufacturing. Notwithstanding the notable expansion and opportunities it provides, new forms of challenges for decision-makers and other stakeholders -including Main Street, cities, states and the federal government - have emerged in its wake. As a result, it has become increasingly relevant to understand the nature of the relationship between the sharing economy and incumbent industries. This project delves into this matter by focusing on the hospitality industry in the United States, while examining how it is impacted by the sharing economy. Using a two-step methodological approach involving filtering methods and vector auto-regressions (VARs), the empirical findings reveal no evidence of the sharing economy acting as an impediment to the hospitality industry. In other words, there is no evidence that it constrains the development of the traditional sector, nor does it appear to be a substitute.