The effect of car sharing on car sales

Free-Floating Car Sharing is a potential substitute to private car ownership. Its staggered rollout in German cities is exploited with a difference-in-difference methodology using an original administrative panel dataset on car registrations to estimate the effect of Free-Floating Car Sharing on new car sales. One car sharing vehicle reduces annual new car sales by three vehicles. This effect is driven by a reduction in sales of small, compact and medium-sized car models. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.