Legal-Economic Issues of Digital & Collaborative Economy

Dear Colleagues,

The economy-law relationship is very old. It has been the subject of discussion and controversy over time, from ancient times to the first decades of the 21st century. This evolution has developed into what is now known as economic analysis of law; or, the legal analysis of economic issues. From it emerges the following questions: Is the economy a social science that must act in isolation from the law? Or, how would an economy run without laws and without regulation?  Due to the globalization of the economy, the increase in economic transactions, and the emergence of new forms of digital and collaborative business among citizens, it has again become necessary to analyze the relation between economy-law or law-economy.

I would like to invite you to submit a contribution to a Special Issue created by Laws, an open access journal published by MDPI. The Special Issue is entitled “Legal-economic Issues of Digital & Collaborative economy.”

The focus of this Special Issue will be the analysis of the development of the economy and of new forms of business based on the digital sphere. These new forms of business are in some cases a challenge for regulations. These forms of business can affect the rights of the citizen ranging from the most basic ones normally included in constitutional law to the sphere of privacy (controlled by regulations on data protection). Through the new forms of digital contracting via blockchain (which will affect civil rights, hiring) and through labour rights (workers in digital sectors), these businesses create a new challenge for tax and collection agencies (affecting tax law) and even reach the sphere of criminal law (in case of illegal acts and responsibility for crimes committed under these new forms of business). All this can also affect the public sector and its digitalization (the administrative law must be adapted for this) or new company creation under commercial law.

The scope of this Special Issue will focus on analyzing the relationship between this new economy and law or law and this new economy; how global, state, or regional regulations are regulating this new way of doing business. The challenges presented by this new form of economy to legislation and how the courts have resolved the novel issues related to this new form of business may also be analysed.

The purpose of the Special Issue is to analyze the revolution of the collaborative economy that has completely transformed our society from a legal-economic standpoint. An emerging new trend seeks collaboration between known and unknown people, designing innovative solutions to solve everyday problems, uniting interests and means.

The collaborative economy is simultaneously competing with traditional companies, leaders in their sectors, and changing paradigms. One of the reasons is that we currently share almost everything: used toys from Wallapop or eBay, second hand cars and the sofa, and even time. We rent houses on AirBnB or Wimdu, we buy second hand clothes on Vibbo, and even use apps like Uber and Blabacar to save us costs on transportation. We buy things using virtual currencies like bitcoin, and if we do not want to leave the house for meals, we can order food delivered to our homes on Deliveroo or Just Eat.

According to PwC, the collaborative economy annually generates transactions in Europe worth 28,000 million euros, and that figure keeps increasing. Citizens contact each other and unite to meet their objectives and desires, and do not wait for a government or a company to provide them with goods or services. The consumer has ceased to be only a consumer and has become a "prosumer," uniting the possibility of producing and consuming in the same figure.

Prof. Dr. Sergio Luis Náñez Alonso
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Laws is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Business and Corporate Law
• Collaborative Economy Law
• Digital Economy Law
• International Law
• Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Criminal Law
• Contract Law
• Tax Law
• Labour Law
• Social Economy Law