Research projects

PROSEco

The project is entitled Platforms Operations and Regulation in the Sharing Economy (PROSEco). In recent years, many innovative sharing economy platforms (SEPs) had a strong impact on their stakeholders: service providers and consumers alike. The sharing economy is not only a land of promises but also of great perils. Even fast-growing and global for-profit platforms like Uber are still struggling to make a profit, while the failure rate of startups is higher than in other sectors. Also, many non-profit SEPs fail to stay active. For both types of platforms, the road to success is paved with a number of operational, economic, and legal challenges, which directly stem from their innovative business model.
These multifaceted challenges call for an interdisciplinary approach to answer our overarching research question: How can platforms in the sharing economy deliver long-lasting value for their stakeholders and for society as a whole? Our objective with this research project is to conduct a fine-grained analysis of the implications of the sharing economy, combining researchers from operations research, economics, and law. A more detailed description of the research project can be found here.

Drails’ members engaged : P. Belleflamme, A. Strowel, A-L. Sibony, L. Desaunettes-Barbero

Study on Copyright and AI in the field of creative industries

This study conducted on behalf of the EU Commisison aims inter alia first at providing a comprehensive insight into how AI is used and is impacting the creative industries based upon desk reserach in interviews with stakeholders. Based upon its finding several forward-looking regulatory scenarios for AI in the creative sector should then be proposed.

Drails’ members engaged : A. Strowel, L. Desaunettes-Barbero

Beyond persons and things: the legal status of AI

The objective of this research project is to investigate the issue of the recognition of legal personhood for robots and other entities based on AI. To this end, it intends to re-examine the “ancestral” division that Western morality and law have posited between people and things, exploring both its conceptual and pragmatic dimensions.

Drails’ members engaged : Christophe Lazaro, Diana Mocanu