Five things we need to know about the on-demand economy. CEPS Essay No. 21/8 January 2016

The last few years have witnessed the exponential growth of platforms like Uber and Airbnb and the creation of countless other less well-known examples. The expansion of the on-demand economy puts huge pressure on regulators to adapt it to the existing frameworks for labour and taxation. The rapid growth of the sector also divides experts: it is seen by many as threat for working conditions, and by others as an incredible opportunity. The purpose of this essay is to take a balanced perspective on what we know about the on-demand economy and what needs further investigation. More research is needed on the individual cases before one can draw conclusions on how this new sector works. The political economy of the sector is made even more interesting by the fact that the technology is developing faster than the regulation. Yet, our plea to policy-makers is to refrain from legislating too early and to take the time to understand how the supply and the demand of these services behave and their equilibrium.

Supporting Access to Finance by SMEs: Mapping the initiatives in five EU countries. ECMI Research Report No. 9, April 2014

This paper maps the initiatives to support access to finance for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that were available at national level in 2012 in the five biggest European economies (Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Spain). This mapping distinguishes initiatives promoted and financed primarily through public resources from those developed independently by the market. A second breakdown is proposed for those sources of finance with different targets, i.e. whether the target is debt financing (typically bank loans at favourable conditions, public guarantees on loans, etc.) or equity financing (typically venture capital funds, tax incentives on equity investments, etc.). A broad set of initiatives has been implemented to close the funding gap of SMEs in these five countries. The total amount of public spending for SMEs, however, has remained well below 1% of GDP. Public subsidisation of bank loans has been by far the most diffused type of intervention. Despite the fact that this strategy might prove to be effective in the short term, it fails to address long-term sustainability issues via a more diversified set of financing tools.