A few weeks ago, my colleagues Chris Koopman, Adam Thierer and I filed a comment with the FTC on the sharing economy. The comment coincided with a workshop that the FTC held at which Adam was invited to speak. Our comment, our earlier paper (forthcoming in the Pepperdine Journal of Business Entrepreneurship and the Law), and a superb piece that Adam and Chris wrote with MA fellows Anne Hobson and Chris Kuiper, have been getting a fair amount of press attention, most of it positive.
I want to highlight one piece that seems to have misunderstood us. I highlight it not because I blame the author, but because I assume we must not have described our point well. Paul Goddin of MobilityLab writes:
Their argument seems valid, but an example they use is New York City’s rule that taxicabs be painted the same color. They argue this regulation is a barrier to entry, yet neglect to mention that Uber also requires its drivers to adhere with automobile standards (although these standards have been loosened recently). As of this article, Uber’s drivers must possess a late-model 2005 sedan (2000 in some cities, 2007-08 in others), with specific color and make restrictions for those who operate the company’s Black car service.
A rule that requires everyone in an industry to use the exact same equipment, branding and paint color is, I suppose, a barrier to entry. But that isn’t why we raised the issue. We raise it because—more importantly—it is a barrier to signaling quality.
It is a good thing that Uber and Lyft require their drivers to adhere to standards, just as it is a good thing that TGI Fridays and CocaCola set their own standards. Walk into a TGI Fridays anywhere in the world and you will encounter a familiar experience. That is because the company sets standards for its recipes, its decorations, its employee’s behavior, its uniforms, and much else. Similarly strict standards govern the way CocaCola is packaged, and marketed. Retailers that operate soda fountains are all supposed to combine the syrup and the carbonated water in the same way. If they don’t, they may find that CocaCola no longer wants to work with them.
These practices ensure quality. And they help overcome what would otherwise be a significant information asymmetry between the buyer and the seller. But notice that these signals only work because they are tied to the brands. Imagine what would happen if Chili’s, Outback Steakhouse, and Macaroni Grill were all required by law to adopt the same logos, the same decor, the same recipes, and the same uniforms as TGI Fridays. Customers would have no way of distinguishing between the brands, and therefore the companies would have little incentive to provide quality service in order to protect their reputations. Who cares about cooking a T Bone properly if the other guys are likely to get blamed for it?
So here in lies the problem with taxi regulations that require all cabs to offer the same sort of service, right down to the color of their cars: If every cab looks the same, no one cab company has an incentive to carefully guard its reputation.
