DEFFAINS Bruno

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A critical law and economics perspective on regulation.

Expungement mechanisms allow first-time offenders to seal their criminal record. Theory predicts that the stigma of a criminal record can hinder the reintegration of criminals for whom legal activities are less lucrative. In theory, expungements priced at the reservation level can facilitate the reintegration of criminals without making first-time crime more attractive. This paper considers a behavioral perspective and offers experimental evidence about the impact of expungements priced at different levels. To do this, we set up a laboratory experiment where subjects repeatedly face opportunities to commit crime (take money from another subject). In addition to stochastic formal sanctions-imposed by the experimenter-we introduce endogenously determined social sanctions. In our main treatments of interest, subjects who choose the wrongful action have the opportunity to expunge their record prior to the second stage, thus avoiding social sanctions as long as they do not recidivate. Overall, our experiment shows that, from a general deterrence perspective, it is better to implement expungements at very high prices. We offer an explanation for this result based on the idea that the price of expungements may signal the moral reprehensibility of the offense.

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This thesis addresses the issues of Big Data in competition law in three chapters. Chapter One proposes new economic tools for defining the relevant market and market power in the data-driven economy. It argues for the need to reform relevant market and market power by considering new tools and a set of factors to consider for market power. Chapter Two offers new economic and legal analyses for data-driven mergers and anticompetitive practices. It explores leading topics related to incorporating privacy into merger assessment and antitrust practices, algorithmic cartels, and preemptive mergers. It argues for the need to integrate privacy into all data-related merger and antitrust cases since data necessarily involves privacy and data protection issues. Finally, Chapter Three proposes regulating the digital economy. It demonstrates that the economy is highly concentrated and that markets cannot correct market failures by themselves. It analyzes the recommendations of government-commissioned reports (Furman et al, Crémer et al, Schallbruch et al, ACCC report and Stigler report) and discusses and considers other original proposals.

We study the manipulation of preferences over redistribution. Previous work showed that preferences over redistribution are malleable by the experience of success or failure in a preceding real-effort task. We manipulate the information subjects receive about the importance of chance relative to effort in determining success. We investigate the effect of this manipulation on (i) subjects' redistribution choices affecting third parties, and (ii) preferences for redistributive taxation. Our results show that informing the subjects about the relative importance of chance after the real-effort task does not mitigate the self-serving bias in redistribution choices. Only providing full information before the real-effort task prevents the emergence of the self-serving bias.

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The history of our society is inseparable from that of legal professionals. The latter constitute the link between the litigant and the State. They guarantee, in particular, the implementation of its regal prerogative to say the law and to render justice. Any change in their activities has repercussions on all citizens. For about fifty years, the judicial and legal professions have been undergoing profound changes, both through successive modifications of their status and through the appearance of computer techniques. The phenomenon of digital transformation has been further enhanced by the availability of open data, encouraging the emergence of players offering digital services to the legal world and to litigants, the LegalTech. These entities, like legal publishers, promote the diffusion of techniques within practices, as well as consolidate their activities as intermediaries.

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The concept of skills and their heterogeneity should be considered important in economic theory and empirics because skills are an opportunity for growth but also a problem for growth. We study the process of skill construction in two agent-based models, but each focuses on different features of this process. In the first model, competencies grow with learning and transfer of competencies in an alliance. We construct a coopetition model where firms partner in R&D for quality innovation but remain competitors in a single-sector market. The partners do not share all their competences and specialize in part. This allows the persistence of alliances and a long-term network. The second model is a consistent stock-flow model, with the main types of agents. It introduces sector innovation, which plays a crucial role for the possibility of long-term growth by overcoming demand saturation. Firms' demand for complex skills increases with the quality of existing products and the characteristics of new products. The supply of skills is modeled at the individual level. We show the blocking effect of the skill constraint, especially in complex skills, on growth and employment, with possible long-run Keynesian depressions.

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This research was conducted by a team federating the skills of economists, jurists and legal practitioners, in response to a call for projects launched in early 2016 by the Mission Recherche Droit et Justice. Supported by two economics laboratories (BETA and CRED), this research focuses on the capacity of a scale to treat equally litigants placed in similar conditions. This question is treated according to three complementary approaches. The first proposes a prospective analysis of the scale, based on a review of the legal economics literature on scales. This literature, which is essentially empirical and focuses on the American case, is rather critical of the ability of scales to achieve their objectives. They would not automatically guarantee greater horizontal equity . they would not necessarily encourage agreements between the parties . they would not guarantee greater severity of sanctions. One of the reasons given is that, when faced with scales, actors, and judges in particular, may develop different attitudes. The second part proposes an empirical analysis ex ante of the introduction of a scale, taking the case of industrial tribunal compensation and using judgments from the Paris Industrial Tribunal prior to the introduction of the mandatory scale in 2017. This descriptive statistical work shows that the amounts obtained are mainly correlated to the section, age and presence of a lawyer (but not to gender). It also examines the effects of a "dummy" application of the 2017 scale. The third part proposes an empirical ex-post analysis of the introduction of a scale, taking the case of the contribution to the maintenance and education of children (CEEE), the determination of which has been governed since the 2010 circular by an indicative scale. Based on the use of six different sources (experimental survey, qualitative survey of judges and four databases of court decisions before and after the scale) and using different econometric methodologies, this section shows that the effect of the scale on the amount of child support and education is not as great as it might seem, This section shows that the homogenization effect attributed to the use of the scale is fairly systematically associated with cases characterized by a pair of divergent parental proposals in terms of CEEE, by a pair of unequal parental incomes in favor of the mother, by a pair of close parental incomes at an intermediate level, or by a pair of consensual and weak parental proposals. On the other hand, the scale would appear to promote disparate outcomes in cases characterized by a zero CSEA offer or in cases characterized by an unequal income couple in favor of the father.

We conduct an experiment where participants choose between actions that provide private benefits but may also impose losses on others. Three legal environments are compared: no law, strict liability for harm caused to third parties, and an efficiently designed negligence rule where damages are paid only when the harmful action generates a net social loss. Legal obligations are either perfectly enforced (Severe Law) or only weakly so (Mild Law), i.e., expected sanctions are then nondeterrent. We find that behavior can be rationalized in terms of individuals trading-off private benefits, net of legal liability, against the net uncompensated losses caused to others. The weight associated with non-incentivized efficiency concerns is increased by the introduction of a liability rule, whether deterrent or not, and there is evidence that the effect is stronger under strict liability than under the negligence rule.

We conduct an experiment where participants choose between actions that provide private benefits but may also impose losses on others. Three legal environments are compared: no law, strict liability for harm caused to third parties, and an efficiently designed negligence rule where damages are paid only when the harmful action generates a net social loss. Legal obligations are either perfectly enforced (Severe Law) or only weakly so (Mild Law), i.e., expected sanctions are then nondeterrent. We find that behavior can be rationalized in terms of individuals trading-off private benefits, net of legal liability, against the net uncompensated losses caused to others. The weight associated with non incentivized efficiency concerns is increased by the introduction of a liability rule, whether deterrent or not, and there is evidence that the effect is stronger under strict liability than under the negligence rule.

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To this day, trust has a polysemous character in social sciences. This notion becomes the center of interest of a number of sociologists, philosophers, psychologists and economists. The "six chapters" of this thesis address the issue of establishing trust between buyers and sellers during an online purchase. The reputation of a seller is presented as the main determinant of trust. The rating system adopted by the online sales site eBay is the focus of our empirical and theoretical analyses. These six chapters are preceded by a general introduction and a review of the literature (first chapter). A second chapter is dedicated to present the impact of ratings - especially negative ratings - left by buyers to sellers, on the latter's presence on the platform, using Markov Chain. A third chapter focuses on optimizing the sales of a specific seller during a given period, while taking into account the ratings left by buyers. The fourth is an empirical study that focuses on the impact of a seller's reputation on the probability of sale and on trust. Chapter five presents the limitations faced by the rating system and proposed solutions. The final chapter, measures and empirically tests the impact of seller reputation manipulation on sale probability and trust.

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International investment treaties often allow the foreign investor to sue the host country before an international arbitration tribunal in the event of a breach of the treaty provisions. The number of investor-state disputes is growing so rapidly that some countries are expressing unease with the current international investment law regime. The first chapter provides readers with an overview of the effectiveness and spillover effects of international investment arbitration. Drawing on a broad interdisciplinary literature, we revisit recent criticisms and identify the underlying cause of the crisis in international arbitration. We conclude that it is possible for countries to adapt the current international law regime to new situations rather than leave it. The second chapter examines the amicable settlement of investor-state disputes. Drawing on the rich economic literature and a new database of treaty violation disputes, we find that the host state's experience, the prospects of the dispute, the nature of the regulatory measures, the identity of the investors, and the Dutch investment treaties significantly influence the likelihood of early dispute resolution. The third chapter focuses on an institutional dimension of arbitration: the effectiveness of ICSID in resolving disputes. Time to resolution and the quality of the final judgment, as represented by the likelihood of post-sentence appeals, are used as indicators of efficiency. We highlight how the biographical and professional characteristics of arbitrators affect ICSID's effectiveness.

The compatibility of environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk management with the requirements of investors' fiduciary responsibilities (FR) in investment management is the key issue in the current context of rapid growth of sustainable investment strategies. This issue is therefore the subject of regulatory developments in Europe as well as recent lawsuits in the US. Despite these legal activities, investors still do not have a clear answer to this issue, leaving them inert to these new types of risks. We explore these recent developments in European and US legal practice to determine concretely to what extent FRs allow investors to take ESG risks into account in their investment decisions. We identify the materiality of ESG risks and the effectiveness of risk management actions as the fundamental elements for defining the fiduciary responsibility of investors to manage ESG risks. We develop a theoretical representation of the concept of materiality under the constraints of FRs and identify that in this legal framework ESG risks are equated with financial risks. their management is therefore only required if they financially affect investments. We also demonstrate that the FRs require the management of long term ESG risks, if they are sufficiently material given the applied discount rate, and formulate a discounting principle consistent with the FRs. Then, through the case study of a recent US litigation, we establish that risk aversion in qualifying the effectiveness of ESG risk management actions could hinder efficient risk management by inducing investors not to manage material ESG risk.

Publisher's presentation: "The Index of Legal Certainty (ILC) is an indicator that empirically evaluates the legal certainty of a national economy in the context of international comparisons. The report was produced by a multidisciplinary team of lawyers and economists on behalf of the Fondation pour le Droit continental and in collaboration with numerous legal practitioners. It defines a specific methodology applied to 10 areas of law in 18 target countries. Original extensions are proposed by crossing the ISJ indicator obtained with other sources such as the World Bank's Rule of Law indicator. The results presented allow us to determine which system offers the most guarantees in terms of legal security. The empirical treatments carried out demonstrate the importance of legal security for a country's economic development and highlight the interest in associating legal security with the rule of law. The Legal Security Index (LSI) argues that reasoned legal security does not imply immobility, minimalism or even the absence of any legislative or regulatory constraints. However, it does imply the accessibility of the law that is effectively applicable, its intelligibility, its predictability, a certain stability over time, and finally the balance between the economic interests of the parties involved. Written in French and English, the Index of Legal Security (ISJ) will allow all those involved in the debate on the economic and legal performance and attractiveness of countries (business lawyers, researchers, or public and private decision-makers) to have access to a renewed approach of the issue.

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The back cover states: "The Index of Legal Certainty (ILC) is an indicator that empirically evaluates the legal certainty of a national economy in the context of international comparisons. This report was produced by a multidisciplinary team of lawyers and economists on behalf of the Fondation pour le Droit continental and in relation with numerous legal practitioners. It defines a specific methodology applied to 10 areas of law in 18 target countries. Original extensions are proposed by crossing the ISJ indicator obtained with other sources such as the World Bank's Rule of Law indicator. The results presented make it possible to determine which system offers the most guarantees in terms of legal security. The empirical treatments carried out demonstrate the importance of legal security for the economic development of a country and highlight the interest in associating legal security with the rule of law. The legal security index (ISJ) maintains that reasoned legal security does not imply immobilism, minimalism or even the absence of any legislative or regulatory constraint. However, it implies the accessibility of the law that is actually applicable, its intelligibility, its predictability, a certain stability over time, and finally the balance between the economic interests of the parties involved. Written in French and English, the Legal Security Index (LSI) will allow all those involved in the debate on the economic and legal performance and attractiveness of countries (business lawyers, researchers or public and private decision-makers) to have access to a renewed approach to the issue".

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This paper analyses the behaviour of an agent under strict liability and negligence when he can influence both the probability of the accident and the probability of being found liable in case of accident. We aim to compare the normative properties of strict liability versus fault-based liability under such circumstances. The model demonstrates that only a negligence rule is efficient and that the optimal damages under strict liability is less than what is usually admitted in the literature, i.e. the expected fine, given the probability to escape the liability, should be less than the level of harm. Finally, the paper highlights the role played by the technologies of precaution and evasion in the results.

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Procedural standards are likely to affect the strategies implemented by the parties to a dispute. We study their impact on the volume of litigation and on the amount of expenses incurred by the parties in order to win the case. These two components of the social cost of litigation are at the heart of the challenges that developed countries face in ensuring the effectiveness of substantive law. Our work focuses in particular on the rules of evidence, and we emphasize the opposition between civil law and common law rules.After having defined the contours and the stakes of our subject in the general introduction, we develop a plan in two parts. The first part deals with the behaviour of the parties when they have the possibility of reaching an agreement. Strategic and optimistic models are developed to understand the decisions to go to court and to negotiate. The second part focuses on the process of evidence production that precedes the final hearing. We use rent-seeking models to analyze the incentives of parties to incur expenses.The results suggest that the rules of evidence have a considerable impact on the social cost of litigation. We show that the volume of litigation in France and the United States can be explained by the different rules of evidence that apply in these two countries. Our analysis also reveals that rules of evidence are a major determinant of the private cost of litigation and of defendants' defense strategies.

Class actions allow several victims to obtain compensation together for a common loss. This procedure, still under study in France, is widely used and practiced across the Atlantic in the form of class-actions. This book studies the economic aspects of these actions, the advantages and disadvantages of such a system. It is the result of a research work carried out within the framework of the BETA Laboratory of Nancy for the GIP Droit et Justice.

In the context of civil liability actions, the proportion of disputes resolved by amicable agreement between the parties remains very heterogeneous across the different countries. The failure of negotiations between the parties is a source of litigation, the cost of which is high, both for the state and for the parties involved in the litigation. In this thesis, we use a wide range of empirical methods to study the variables that can influence the probability of conciliation between two parties involved in a lawsuit. The work carried out can be divided into four main themes. First, we conduct a meta-analysis to study the rationality of individuals in one of the simplest negotiation games: the ultimatum game. The results of our analysis show that proposers act rationally and correctly anticipate the behavior of the respondents facing them, in order to maximize their profit. Subsequently, we perform a comparative meta-analysis of the ultimatum and dictator games to analyze the fairness assumption that the offers made in these two games are not significantly different. Our study finds a positive correlation between the level of development of countries and the probability of rejection of this hypothesis. In a third step, we focus on the variables that may influence the probability of conciliation between two parties involved in a labour dispute in France. The presence of a lawyer for the plaintiff during the conciliation phase and the size of the amount at stake in the dispute seem to have a negative influence on the probability of conciliation. Finally, we conduct a laboratory experiment to analyze the behavior of individuals who do not wish to negotiate but are nevertheless forced to do so. The results of our experiment show that subjects are more aggressive when they are forced to negotiate. This aggressiveness translates into less generous offers and a higher rejection rate.

We explore the impact of the self-serving bias on the supply and demand for redistribution. We present results from an experiment in which participants decide on redistribution after performing a real e↵ort task. Dependent on individual performance, participants are divided into two groups, successful and unsuccessful. Participants' success is exogenously determined, because they are randomly assigned to either a hard or easy task. However, because participants are not told which task they were assigned to, there is ambiguity as to whether success or failure should be attributed to internal or external factors. Participants take two redistribution decisions. First, they choose a supply of redistribution in a situation where no personal interests are at stake. Second, they choose a redistributive system behind a veil of ignorance. Our results confirm and expand previous findings on the self-serving bias: successful participants are more likely to attribute their success to their e↵ort rather than luck, and they opt for less redistribution. Unsuccessful participants tend to attribute their failure to external factors and opt for more redistribution. We demonstrate that the self-serving bias contributes to a polarization of the views on redistribution.

This thesis focuses on the effects that information has on incentives. The three papers provide and explore results when information is the main variable of interest, is endogenous, not homogeneous across actors, and evolves over time in a way that is not necessarily rational. The first paper studies hold-up problems in vertical hierarchies with adverse selection showing that as workers' bargaining power increases, the distortions arising from information asymmetry disappear. In addition, he studies the effect of education and the degree of heterogeneity of the worker population on the distribution of bargaining power in regulated markets. The second paper relaxes the homogeneous belief assumption in principal-agent relationships with adverse selection. In evolutionary learning that is imitative, principals may have different beliefs about the distribution of agent types in the population. Convergence to a uniform belief depends on the relative size of the polarization in beliefs. Furthermore, the model is a version of a stable cobweb. Our approach offre explanations for the alternating periods with oscillating and relatively stable quantity. The third paper studies the fac¸on in which the informational content of legal policies, such as strict liability and negligence, in case of moral concerns, influence the optimal design of liability regimes. Several recent cases have shown that an individual who has caused harm exposes himself not only to a legal sanction - for example, a fine - but also to social boycott, disapproval, or stigmatization. The article shows that the choice of a strategy depends in a complex way on the importance of the damage and the "moral cost".

This research is a contribution to the reflection on the regulation of a Universal Service of telecommunications integrating the access to the Internet in an optics of maximization of the collective well-being. A first topic concerns the effect of an integration of a minimal level of bandwidth in the definition of the Universal Service. A second theme concerns the optimal choice of technologies to ensure the quantum of bandwidth defined by the Universal Service. A third theme concerns the impact of the amount of bandwidth on consumption, and therefore the bandwidth objective that the Universal Service must aim for in order to maximize collective well-being. The fourth theme is that of consumer surplus gains as a function of Internet access prices. These relationships are established on the basis of data from OECD countries, and we mainly seek to answer questions concerning the minimum level of bandwidth, as well as the optimal choice of technologies from an economic theoretical analysis. On the other hand, questions concerning the impact of the amount of bandwidth on consumption and surplus gains by consumers are targeted through an econometric analysis.

France, like all developed countries with a market economy, has an elaborate and complex tax system made up of a large number of mandatory levies. In determining its tax policy, the legislator pursues several objectives. These objectives include efficiency and equity. These tax objectives obey different logics, and can sometimes be contradictory. Does the French tax system succeed in achieving these objectives? Various concepts and situations - for example tax niches and tax optimization - studied in the French case but also in an international comparative perspective, by analyzing several types of taxes, will shed light on how tax policies position themselves with respect to equity and efficiency, and make recommendations to optimally resolve the dilemma between efficiency and equity of compulsory levies.

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The back cover states: "Victims of competition damages risk being deprived of compensation if certain trends in the law and current practical difficulties continue. The effectiveness of the law of anti-competitive practices and of competition law in general depends largely on the place occupied by compensation for competitive damages. This is the observation of Muriel Chagny and Bruno Deffains led to go beyond the sole analysis of positive law to explore the avenues of evolution of the law or adaptation of judicial practice and, in particular, the avenues of transposition of the Directive of November 26, 2014. At the crossroads of competition law, civil liability and civil procedure, compensation for competitive damages in France is, moreover, confronted with competition from other legal systems, inviting the integration of considerations related to the attractiveness of French law and the French judicial system into the reflection. It is from a normative approach, following a critical analysis of positive law and based on an economic analysis, that recommendations are put forward for competition law as a whole. Some of them could even be applied more broadly to the compensation of economic damages and have an impact on the law of civil liability and on the law of civil procedure. The reflection, enlightened by the economics of law, is both fundamental and practical. It is thus intended for lawyers, magistrates, company lawyers, legal experts and other actors in the field of competitive damage compensation".

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The objective of this study is to demonstrate that the incentives created by the presence or lack of transparency in legal costs on the decision to litigate are related in different ways to degrees of certainty.

One of the causes of the wealth of nations, cooperation, is based on an exchange of promises. While contract law is considered an effective - if imperfect - tool for securing these promises, it is not the only one: a whole web of formal and informal institutions is at work to facilitate cooperation between economic agents. This paper examines this issue in the context of Islamic finance, which is seen as the modern application of Islamic contract law. While it is supposed to use participatory financing instruments, the practice of Islamic finance is dominated by debt financing. The causes generally put forward to explain this state of affairs are informational problems, which are considered to influence the behavior of banks. This thesis shows that these informational problems are in fact only the consequence of an underlying problem. Through an analysis of the role and purpose of institutions, this work shows that Islamic contract law was originally designed with a clear objective: to ensure the balance of transactions and guarantee ownership. The fulfillment of promises was ensured by other types of mechanisms, notably through reputation, which in effect complemented contract law. This conclusion allows us to understand the "form vs. substance" debate in Islamic finance through the failure of an "intertemporal institutional transplant", to show that avoided contracts are dependent on the context in which they were born and do not adapt well to the modern context.

We compare fault-based and strict liability offences in law enforcement when behavior is influenced by informal prosocial norms of conduct. Fault tends to be more effective than strict liability in harnessing social or self-image concerns. When enforcement relies on fines and assessing fault is not too costly, the optimal legal regime is fault-based with a standard consistent with the underlying social norm if convictions would seldom occur under optimal enforcement. otherwise liability should be strict. When sanctions are nonmonetary or when stigmatization imposes a deadweight loss, the legal standard may be harsher or more lenient than the social norm.

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Questions of legitimacy and stability of political systems have long been studied separately from problems of implementation of law in economics. The objective of this thesis is to reconcile these different approaches in order to place the implementation of the legal norm at the center of the institutional debate. This work is broken down into five empirical or experimental investigations, each of which focuses on one of the stages of the political and judicial process.The first article focuses on the impact of constitutional rights on public spending. The second study explores the influence of self-indulgence bias on the demand for and supply of redistribution. The third work analyzes the decisions rendered by the Constitutional Council. The fourth part examines the 2008 reform of the judicial map of the Conseils de Prud'hommes. The last chapter studies the relationship between the union composition of Labor Courts and the outcomes of the litigations that are brought to them.Our analyses are based on econometric and experimental tools. They make use of classical estimation methods (OLS, GLS, Probit, Logit, Within OLS), selection models (Heckman, Triprobit), tools for endogeneity problems (2SLS) and techniques for estimating equation systems (3SLS). The experimental approach also includes commonly applied statistical tests (permutation tests, mean comparison tests, proportion tests) as well as recent methods for dealing with heterogeneity (wild clustering).

Dentists alone summarize the difficulties of reconciling money and health.a reputation not conducive to smiles, tooth-pulling ancestors and the myth of the thieving practitioner make the care relationship complex.yet the profession has largely modernized to escape its image. The new techniques, the better physical and psychological care of the patient try to reconcile the general public with dentistry. At the same time, the technical platforms are getting heavier, the rate of charge is increasing, the fees are rising and the patients' out-of-pocket expenses are getting higher and higher, reminding us that health has a price, especially when it comes to oral health.It is necessary to question the parameters influencing these fees and the reasons for such a controversy. First of all, it is necessary to clarify the justification of the free fee acts. Originally, it is a possibility of financial compensation for care acts for which the tariffs fixed by the convention are very low. However, this possibility of compensation is diminishing. If the State does not directly regulate fees, complementary organizations are taking more and more place in the healthcare arena and are setting up healthcare networks. At the same time, patients are changing their behavior, by giving up, postponing or choosing healthcare structures with a less expensive offer, in France or abroad, which raises new medical and legal questions.

The accelerating pace of technological innovation and pressures from civil society are two major challenges for tort law. This thesis studies the incentive effects of civil liability on the prevention behavior of companies in this context. Our contribution aims, in particular, to deepen the traditional analysis of corporate liability on the one hand, and on the other hand to assess to what extent non-statutory sanctions play a role alongside this legal framework. First, we highlight the evolution of the economic analysis of liability. Then we study civil liability in a theoretical model, with the contribution of assessing the incentive effects of the legal concept of causation. Then, we examine how the difficulties in predicting accident risks affect the incentives provided by civil liability, through a theoretical model on the one hand, and through a laboratory experiment on the other. We develop in a theoretical model an analysis of the role of non-legal sanctions, emanating from civil society, alongside tort liability. We show that the incentives provided by consumer boycotts on the prevention behavior of companies are limited. Finally, we complement this model with an empirical study, and investigate the extent and determinants of the consumer boycott phenomenon in Europe.

The back cover states: "Victims of competition damages risk being deprived of compensation if certain trends in the law and current practical difficulties continue. The effectiveness of the law of anti-competitive practices and of competition law in general depends largely on the place occupied by compensation for competitive damages. This is the observation of Muriel Chagny and Bruno Deffains led to go beyond the sole analysis of positive law to explore the avenues of evolution of the law or adaptation of judicial practice and, in particular, the avenues of transposition of the Directive of November 26, 2014. At the crossroads of competition law, civil liability and civil procedure, compensation for competitive damages in France is, moreover, confronted with competition from other legal systems, inviting the integration of considerations related to the attractiveness of French law and the French judicial system into the reflection. It is from a normative approach, following a critical analysis of positive law and based on an economic analysis, that recommendations are put forward for competition law as a whole. Some of them could even be applied more broadly to the compensation of economic damages and have an impact on the law of civil liability and on the law of civil procedure. The reflection, enlightened by the economics of law, is both fundamental and practical. It is thus intended for lawyers, magistrates, company lawyers, legal experts and other actors in the field of competitive damage compensation".

This thesis seeks to study and determine the impact of public transport improvements on the crime pattern in a large city like Bogotá. In a first step, this research seeks to specify the number of jobs reachable by the city's inhabitants in three different time intervals. The effective size of the labor market is thus defined in order to determine whether the inhabitants of the different areas that make up the city have the same degree of accessibility to jobs. Once the accessibility is defined, this study makes a comparative study in relation to the socio-economic characteristics of the inhabitants per area as well as in relation to the presence or lack of transport system improvements in each area that make up the city of Bogotá. The presence of transport system improvements is defined by the passage of the transport system called Transmilenio (TM) in each zone. In order to deepen on the link between the socio-economic characteristics of the inhabitants and the presence of TM in each zone of the city, we focus, in a second step, on the existence of a possible endogenous relationship of the presence of TM in the concentration of jobs and high incomes in Bogotá. The objective of this analysis is to determine whether public transport improvements have a causal relationship in the location of jobs and high incomes in each area of the city. We then adopt the hypothesis that criminals prefer to commit their crimes in employment areas and in areas with a high concentration of high incomes (independently of the location of residential areas). In the same vein, and in order to establish a causal relationship on the evolution of five different types of crime in each area of the city, this study performs an ex-ante and ex-post analysis of the implementation of Transmilenio. Due to the weakness of the data base for the different periods, the results of this step are not homogeneous and this makes them unconvincing. However, they give us a relevant approximation of the impact that Transmilenio can have in the configuration of crime in the city. These results lead us to make, in a final step, a causality analysis for the period for which the available data are complete for all areas of the city and do not show reliability problems. After this stage of analysis, the results are convincing. They suggest that there is indeed a causal relationship of the presence of Transmilenio on the evolution of three of the five types of crimes subject to our study. The results also identify a clear spatial dependence of the concentration of crimes in the city. Thus, it seems that, despite the multiple positive effects that improved public transport can have for the inhabitants of a city, it can also stimulate an increase in certain types of crime in the areas served by Transmilenio. Despite the limitations of this study that will need to be resolved in future research, the results obtained, as well as the way the topic is approached, represent an innovative analytical perspective for a better understanding of the possible negative consequences that can thwart the objectives of urban transport policies in large cities. We believe that this thesis contributes to the complementary nature of studies on the effects of urban transport.

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This thesis explores the dynamics of informal institutions in national and global governance and the adjustment of the political-economic order, in a country in transition and globally in the context of the international financial crisis, using the comparative institutional approach. It adopts a New Institutional Economics (NIE) perspective to study how different forms of governance, including informal governance mechanisms, emerge and function under different circumstances. Chapter Two provides evidence of the predominance of accommodative and competitive relationships between formally and informally decentralized systems of public service delivery and law and order in sixty-four Vietnamese provinces. Our analysis of "informality" in Chapter Three supports the argument that formal mechanisms are not sufficient to induce public actors to assume full responsibility, but must be accompanied by informal ones to fill in the accountability gaps of the formal system. The empirical analysis of forty-five developed and developing countries in chapter four finds that institutional non-congruence, in general, has a complementary effect on the size of the informal economy, but acts as a substitute in countries that have low levels of non-congruence, good governance of corruption, or high proactivity in taking initiatives to reduce the perceived legitimacy gap of informal economic activities.

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This thesis makes an empirical contribution to two problems facing public procurement: the insufficient implementation of contracts and the choice of whether or not to increase the discretionary margins of public authorities in awarding procedures. The traditional economic approach and regulation have sought to define modes of awarding contracts to the 'lowest bidder', in which the risks of manipulation are assumed to be limited. However, this approach must be questioned in terms of its overall impact on the efficiency of public procurement. Indeed, several recent studies show that contracts are often not rigorously implemented or are incomplete. In such a situation, the lowest bid, ex ante, can be a strategic response that incorporates the possibility of extracting rents ex post, via a lower quality than promised and/or a renegotiation of the initial agreement. The first part of this thesis highlights the difficulties associated with the implementation of contracts, while the second part focuses on the solutions that increased discretion can bring. Thus, we first place ourselves in the regulatory framework of reference, i.e. as it is most often presented to European public purchasers: open tendering is mandatory and only a rigorous implementation of the contract can align ex post the interests of the parties. Despite the existence of incentive clauses, we show that quality problems persist. We suggest several reasons for this persistence: the non-verifiability of efforts (chapter 1) and contractual incompleteness (chapter 2). In this second case, we show that solutions can be developed. Nevertheless, they are only suitable for specific cases. We then depart from the reference framework to study a situation where the public party's room for maneuver increases: it is no longer subject to the obligation to use open tendering. Chapters 3 and 4 successively analyze the interest of negotiated procedures and restricted auctions, both of which increase the buyer's discretionary power. We interpret the capacity of both to improve the efficiency of procurement as a sign that greater freedom in awarding contracts can be a relevant tool for optimizing public purchasing.

We consider situations where legal liability yields insufficient incentives for socially efficient behavior, e.g., individuals who cause harm are not always sued or are unable to pay fully for harm done. Some individuals nevertheless behave efficiently because of intrinsic prosocial concerns. Others have no such concerns but would like people to believe that they do. We show that fault-based liability is generally more effective than strict liability in harnessing social image concerns. This extends to the case where courts can make mistakes. The rules of proof then affect the inferences drawn from court decisions and therefore the stigma attached to an adverse judgment. If fault is a rare event, plaintiffs or prosecutors should bear the burden of proving the defendant’s fault. otherwise there are cases where defendants should prove compliance with the legal standard of behavior. Under either assignment of the burden of proof, incentives to comply are maximized by a standard of proof stronger than a mere preponderance of evidence.

This research investigates how legal sanctions prevailing under bankruptcy may impact on debt contracting and on investing decision. We model firms having the opportunity to engage (or not) faulty management. In case of default, the firms may escape costly bankruptcy by reaching a private agreement with the bank. We show that such renegotiation process may depend on the level of severity of bankruptcy law.

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For too long, the analysis of the European Union's jurisprudence has been the sole focus of legal scholars. But, if successive jurisprudential analyses have so far apprehended the structuring principles of this jurisprudence and have attempted to conceptualize them, it will be argued that these undertakings have been only partial. Indeed, the main principle, albeit implicit, of the evolution of the European Union's jurisprudence is the principle of economic efficiency. This deficiency, which renders the conceptualization of European jurisprudence only imperfect, is due to the absence of a methodical and systemic economic analysis of European law and, more particularly, of European jurisprudence. This thesis intends to fill this gap. Beyond undertaking an in-depth economic analysis of European jurisprudence allowing for a renewed and clarified conceptualization of the figure of the European judge, our study will allow us to enter the debate on the alleged superiority of Common Law systems in terms of economic efficiency. Moreover, our thesis, through an original analysis grid renewing the analysis of (European) law, will highlight the points of convergence and divergence between lines of jurisprudence. The systematization of our jurisprudential analysis by the perspective of the principle of economic efficiency will allow us, thus, to elaborate a real scientific hypothesis that can be falsified and falsified. We will formulate a hypothesis of the economic efficiency of European jurisprudence.

The means and organization of justice are important determinants of the efficiency of this institution. However, these aspects are still marginally studied in the economic analysis of law. After having highlighted the need for a framework for the economic analysis of the relations between the results of judicial activity, the means allocated to the system, the demand for justice and its modes of organization, we contribute directly to the exploration of these relations. First, thanks to a theoretical model, we demonstrate the existence of a multiplier effect of public spending on justice based on the analysis of a particular type of conflict: rental disputes. We then show that a marginal increase in spending on the resolution of this type of conflict significantly improves both the functioning of the courts and the functioning of the rental housing market. Then, thanks to an econometric test using original data - in particular those produced by the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice - we highlight a positive and robust link between individuals' confidence in justice and various budgetary variables. We develop the idea that the justice budget plays a role as a signal of the quality of the institution for agents whose real knowledge of the judicial system is limited. Finally, in a double moral hazard model applied to the production of justice, we analyze the relationships between the means and the organization of justice and between the latter and the results of its activity. We then show that certain equilibria in the strategic game between the agents responsible for the production of judicial services - the government and the judiciary - correspond to inefficient situations because the judiciary is led to carry out administrative tasks in place of the government, at the cost of a relatively low level of production of judicial services.

Justice is indeed a good with specific characteristics that make it a "trust good". This quality is not, moreover, revealed to consumers even after consumption of the good. In this respect, one may wonder about the interest of the "certification" of this justice. The market has in fact invented certification as a useful "signal" for "standard goods" and "experience goods", on the quality of which previous consumption provides information, and which can then be standardized. In this case, producers offering high quality goods can hope to have an "informational rent" that allows them to signal this quality in a credible way, for example through a label. Certification, on the other hand, is not well suited to trusted goods. There is dissatisfaction with the evaluation of jurisdictional activity by a single battery of cost-centered performance indicators. The effectiveness or efficiency of justice also depends on the affective support of citizens, and has an emotional dimension that is reflected in the trust that citizens place in it, or not. The acceptability of legal decisions is also a guarantee of their proper execution, and, more broadly, of the effectiveness of the dissuasive dimension of the sanction recognized by the law. This acceptance can also be of a nature to compensate for the invisible social costs of renouncing justice (perpetuation of unresolved situations, frustration of not being able to obtain a satisfactory jurisdictional solution, etc.). It is in this context that we will shed light in the first part on an economic approach to justice, which opens up perspectives for reflection on the theory of prices applied to the resolution of disputes, on the optimal conditions for resolving conflicts, and on the economic effects of the behaviour of litigants. The economic analysis of law (EAL) then becomes our tool, the central pivot of analysis. The economic analysis of law is the discipline that seeks to explain legal phenomena using the methods and concepts of economics. This double discipline deals with the analysis of legal phenomena by the tools of economics. By tools of economics, one must understand mainly the cost-benefit analysis, the concepts of average costs, the reflection on the implementation of indicators used to measure an activity. Then it becomes necessary to go beyond this concept, to broaden our vision, which leads us to question the way(s) to improve the judicial systems of treatment of disputes based on the quality approach. Thus, the theme of quality in justice in general and in judicial decisions in particular, opens the field to a normative analysis centered on the notion of cost/time and social efficiency, which analyses will open the doors to pragmatic reflection on the use and relevance of confidence and legitimization inducing devices. These new confidence and legitimation inducing devices are called "Governance" when they apply to legal production in the sense of "giving an order". They are called "Mediation" when applied to the prevention or resolution of conflicts in the sense of "finding a solution that prevents the occurrence of a conflict or that settles it". All this, in order to facilitate the emergence of a cooperative solution. Alternative dispute resolution (ADR), conceived in civil law as a manifestation of the contractual freedom of the subjects of rights, a freedom that allows them to compromise on the existence, the extent or the exercise of their subjective rights in order to put an end to a dispute, thus appears as a means of avoiding a trial. This is the first of its functions, generally put forward by the economic analysis of law when it considers the judgment as a failure of negotiation between the parties. At the same time, ADR is generally seen as a diversionary technique. The transaction appears to be a means of preventing and settling a dispute before resorting to legal proceedings, which can only benefit from this relief because they will be fewer and therefore faster. ADR can also be used at many different moments: it can allow for the resolution of a dispute before it has crystallized to the point of going to court, just as it can put an end to a dispute when the judge has only just been seized. Some authors evoke the idea of a "mediation in the shadow of the law". The last part of this thesis instructs us to focus our reflection on a field approach, that of the evaluation and control of quality in France, that of the implementation of the quality approach in the jurisdictions, with possible biases such as "the effects of legal aid on the incentive to take legal action, on the mode of resolution of conflicts..." that finally of the measurement of the activity through relevant indicators. The analysis of the activity of the TGI in terms of indicators in general, and that of the TGI of Nancy in particular, highlights the difficulty of the homogeneity of the notion of cases and its reductive nature, it being understood, however, that "cases" correspond to civil lawsuits, and not to measures of orders or instructions. This analysis makes it possible to highlight an important reflection on the method(s) to be used in order to improve and control the results, essentially in terms of time and costs.

The economic analysis of civil liability has developed around the idea that this legal tool can ex ante provide incentives to prevent accident risks. In the presence of large-scale technological risks, this literature has notably highlighted the inefficiencies of the limited liability regime. In an effort to protect investors in order to facilitate the inflow of capital necessary for the emergence of modern production activities, this regime may provide sub-optimal incentives to prevent a risk whose damage is not fully internalized. In Chapter 1, we review this literature and highlight the fact that a comparison with analyses conducted in environmental economics is necessary. Such a comparison, opening the analysis to the possibility of induced technological change, has been initiated in a framework of polluting emissions regulation. Our thesis will then show that such a rapprochement is desirable and will bring new results for the economic analysis of large-scale technological risk prevention. Chapter 2 shows that the possibility of technological change makes it possible to relativize the scope of the inefficiencies of limited liability. We highlight the fact that such a liability regime can lead firms to make technological changes that reduce the probability of accidents and better internalize the risk. In addition, the introduction of a tax based on the level of production reinforces the efficiency of this regime. Chapters 3 and 4 extend the analysis to the presence of imperfectly known risks, which may arise in the presence of new technologies. We compare limited and unlimited liability, and show that the latter provides more incentives to seek risk information while having the least impact on technology choice. Finally, Chapter 5 addresses the issue of innovation, when technical progress can change both the cost of prevention and the probability of accidents. We show that the type of innovation and the role of the Regulator are essential: the no-fault liability rule is always preferable to the negligence rule in the presence of a conformist Regulator, but the latter may be preferable in the presence of a proactive Regulator if the technical progress essentially modifies the prevention cost.

In 2004, within the framework of the law of March 9 adapting to changes in crime, the Preliminary Recognition of Guilt Procedure (CRPC) was introduced. The aim of this system, which is quicker and less costly than a trial, is to relieve the congestion of criminal court hearings. Since it came into force, there has been some reluctance to apply this procedure because of the fear of seeing French justice slide towards abuses similar to those seen in the United States. Numerous questions have been raised concerning its effectiveness and fairness, recently renewed by the Léger Committee's proposal to extend its scope to crimes. In order to shed light on the debate about the potentially undesirable effects of the guilty plea, in general, and of the CRPC, in particular, the economic analysis of the guilty plea proposed in this thesis has two objectives. The first objective is to examine how effective the penalty imposed under the guilty plea may be in reducing miscarriages of justice and/or deterring offenders from committing an offense. An original synthesis of the literature is conducted with an emphasis on two aspects of guilty plea effectiveness: disclosure and crime deterrence. We thus highlight valuable lessons on the effectiveness of the CRPC in its current state of application as well as on its expected effects if its field of application is extended. In particular, the economic literature advocates maintaining a sentence close to the judgment, granting the prosecutor an adequate budget and introducing sentencing scales. It then challenges the principles of sentence reduction, cost saving and individualization of the sentence. The second objective of this thesis is to examine the fairness of guilty pleas. Indeed, although the reproach of unfairness has been frequently formulated in France and in the United States against this procedure, the economic literature has not, to date, studied this question. In order to provide answers to the legal debates, two distinct analyses are conducted. First, we examine the influence of the method of paying the lawyer on the sentence imposed on the defendant. We show that a two-tiered justice system is emerging insofar as the mode of remuneration affects the outcome of the dispute (plea of guilty or trial) and, moreover, the sentence imposed on the accused. Then, based on a sample collected by us, we discuss, with the help of an econometric study, the fairness of the CRPC. We show that the place of appearance plays a fundamental role in the type of sentence imposed on the accused.

Employment protection is defined as the regulations governing the rules for hiring and firing employees, and finds its sources in legislation, collective bargaining and court decisions. For the past fifteen years, a vast macroeconomic literature has examined the effects of employment protection on labor market performance, or more precisely the effects of dismissal procedures on the employment rate, duration and unemployment rate. More recent work is beginning to highlight other consequences of employment protection, namely its incentive effects on the behavior of individuals: faced with a certain employment regulation regarding layoffs, economic agents adapt, react and adopt strategic behaviors. This thesis is part of this work by exploring the individual incentives generated by labor legislation. Indeed, labor law relating to dismissal and its implementation by the courts have consequences on the behavior of the parties to the employment relationship at several levels. On the one hand, the terms and conditions of dismissal have an ex ante impact on the respective levels of investment of the employer and the employee within their relationship: indeed, the way in which the courts judge a dispute following a dismissal and in particular the elements taken into account in their decisions have an influence on the incentives of the parties to make specific investments. Thus, the analysis presented shows, in particular, which economic and social elements judges should take into account if the objective is to maximize the levels of investment chosen by the parties. On the other hand, the structure of court proceedings also has an impact on the behavior of individuals once the dispute between the two parties has started. By making comparisons between several dispute resolution systems using theoretical tools and experimental analysis, this thesis contributes to the current legal debates about the ability of procedures to generate the maximum number of agreements, allowing the reduction of legal expenses.

In an integrated world where European legal systems are almost inevitably moving closer together, jurisdictions are developing attractive frameworks to capture tax bases. We propose to characterize the processes of legal integration at the European level and to justify the competitive nature of the institutional behaviors adopted by the European States, by defining in particular the dynamics of Community law. These sources make it possible, for example, to identify the different legal strategies for the approximation of normative frameworks implemented by the European authorities. They also give us a glimpse of institutional room for manoeuvre, which justifies and legitimizes a competitive analysis of the processes of Community legal integration and makes it relevant to define a framework for analyzing the attractiveness of jurisdictions according to an institutional competition approach. In addition, the analysis of the attractiveness of countries, particularly from an intangible and qualitative point of view, further justifies the legal approach to competition between EU Member States. Two types of spatial competition models are proposed to illustrate the institutional competition at work within the European space, namely a "shopping" approach that takes into account fiscal and institutional aspects of competition between States and a multi-stage institutional competition approach. Both analyses highlight the impact of intrinsic local characteristics (size, institutional public efficiency) on the nature of competition between European countries.

We integrate into the traditional model of delinquency a specificity of juvenile delinquency, namely the fact that, generally, juvenile delinquents act in gangs. In doing so, we break with the Beckerian model based on the assumption that delinquents are isolated individuals, and we follow the line of integrative theories. More precisely, the objective of our work is to study the influence of gangs on adolescents' decision to commit an offence and, if necessary, to re-offend. To this end, we use a theoretical and empirical analysis. Theoretically, our research has two objectives. The first objective is to explain the sociologists' finding that gang affiliation induces adolescents to commit crimes. To do this, we use economic models, not used in the economics of delinquency, and demonstrate, using an original model, that in some cases an individual criminal sanction may be ineffective in diverting a gang member from delinquency. The second objective is to study whether gang affiliation can affect the outcome of a delinquent career. Empirically, we seek to test the validity of our theoretical predictions using an original database tracking the judicial careers of 535 juvenile offenders. Our results highlight the ineffectiveness of repressive policies in the context of gangs, which leads us to advocate other forms of policies to fight juvenile delinquency.

The World Bank reports "Doing business" (2004, 2005 and 2006), referring to the main assumptions and findings of the "law and finance" theory, predict that the common law system provides better for financial development and economic growth than French origin civil law. This thesis challenges the "law and finance" theory supported by La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny (LLSV). Thus, it undergoes an empirical investigation of the role of corporate governance in financial development and in shaping the financial structure of firms. We focus on French corporate governance reforms in order to examine whether these reforms are consistent with a reorganization of the French financial system during the period 1980-2004. This research aims to evaluate the proposition that there is a strong and stable relationship between legal origin, investor protection and financial system. LLSV affirm, in addition, that the causality is from law to finance. Our analysis considers the dynamic aspect of corporate governance. The key question the study suggests that indicators of investor protection may be independent from legal origin. In addition, our investigation is rather focuses on other stakeholders (employees and bondholders) and points out that the stakeholder' point of view appears to be more relevant, than the shareholder approach, to understand the corporate governance mechanisms. Our econometric investigation is rather new as the law and finance literature has not always focused on the elaboration of corporate governance indicators suitable for the french legislation. Also, our thesis undergoes a multiple criteria analysis of corporate governance reforms, which is a method not yet used in the growing literature generated by the legal corporate governance approach. Indeed, we weight the dummy variables according to the importance of stakeholder rights included in the constructions of the indicators. This methodology shows that the causality is especially from finance to law. This thesis yields results that mitigate the main LLSV's predictions and emphasize the merits of the stakeholder approach.

This thesis examines the costs and benefits of retailer buying power in the retail industry. Buying power is a source of efficiency when it offers competitive prices and product variety to the consumer, but it can distort competition between suppliers and increase the market power of retailers. In chapter 1, the inflation of national brands that followed the 1996 regulations is explained by the behavior of retailers. Entry into the discount market and the pricing of private labels were not enough to stop this development. Chapter 2 is a case study of French distribution networks, conducted using transaction cost theory. The coexistence of integrated groups and cooperatives of independents is due to different degrees of asset specificity. The strategic price positioning of the independent cooperatives is explained by the governance of the buying groups by means of the third party, which saves transaction costs. A model of enforcement is proposed in chapter 3. The distributor punishes the suppliers for the damages suffered. Deterrence is usually excessive when the distributor uses monetary and/or non-monetary quasi-sanctions. An empirical analysis of private label production in Chapter 4 shows that the retailer chooses domestic producers consistent with its branding strategy. Moreover, retailers prefer domestic producers when their bargaining power is low and SME alternatives are numerous.

We study the process of asylum legislation and its impact on refugees. The preliminary chapter presents the history of refugee flows and asylum policies, the reasons for migration and the philosophical stakes of the subject. The second chapter studies the influence of asylum policies on refugee flows. We analyse the impact of different types of asylum law restrictions on decisions of refugees choosing their country of destination and whether to apply for asylum. The use of traffickers indirectly influences the size of the immigration flows and the number of asylum claims. The third chapter describes the choice of the level of asylum standard chosen by different levels of government. This choice is made as a result of the expected result of a standard on refugee flows. Chapter four compares different institutional choices for asylum legislation in the European Union. Taking objectives concerning illegal immigration into account, it compares the level of standards that would be adopted by national governments, by the Council of the European Parliament, and in co-decision. The fifth chapter studies the structure of grants given Member states by the European Refugee Fund (ERF). The ERF grants both fixed funds and subsidies that complement project funding. Taking transaction costs into consideration, we study the impact of different grant structures on spending on refugees.

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A flexible law is a law that leaves a margin of discretion to the judge. It is characterized by general or "incomplete" rules. This margin of discretion has a cost: the reduction of the information given by the law to agents. In a context where the complexity of the law is increasing exponentially, the question of the rationality of a flexible law arises. In other words, should legal rules be incomplete or should they specify all contingencies? This thesis fits into the literature of economic analysis of rule characteristics by analyzing the problem from the perspective of law production. First, a theoretical treatment of rule formulation using real options theory is presented in order to contribute to the understanding of the existence of incomplete rules in complex and innovative environments. The question of the basis for public authority intervention is then raised. The choice between a flexible regime, based on the occurrence of harm, and a rigid regime, based on the detection of the activity, depends on the information of the legislator and the agents on the risk. The influence of the degree of precision of the rules on the amicable resolution of disputes is analyzed. This study allows us to justify in part the production of soft law by private parties. Finally, the notion of flexibility is applied to the controversy about the effectiveness of legal harmonization as a solution to jurisdictional competition. The problem of asylum law is considered. Incompleteness of legal rules is thus justified when circumstances vary greatly and when the field is innovative. Otherwise, the precision of the rules informs the agents: it is thus necessary in a context of under or over estimation of the agents' risk and as an aid to the resolution of disputes.

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The economic analysis of dispute resolution focuses on the microeconomic behavior of litigants. Since settlement is less costly than trial, the choice of judgment is explained by the parties' excessive optimism about their chances of winning at trial and by the information asymmetries that encourage the parties to behave strategically. In the optimistic stream, the agreement is reached if there is a negotiation interval. In the strategic stream, filtering and signaling models determine the probability of settlement and its amount, under incomplete information. A dynamic approach makes it possible to predict the moment of its achievement and highlights a last limit effect whose presence is empirically confirmed in French civil courts. Once the variables influencing the outcome of the dispute have been identified and the state of the art of French civil justice has been established, policies to regulate the demand for justice are considered, the objective being to minimize the social cost of disputes. These policies are first focused on the costs of litigation. A positive analysis shows that an increase in trial costs reduces the frequency of judgments, but that its impact is limited by legal aid, the aim of which is to facilitate access to the courts for the poorest. A policy of reallocating trial costs between parties is then considered through a comparison of the incentives to sue and negotiate under the American, English and French cost award rules. The role of lawyers in obtaining settlements is also studied, with emphasis on their own particularities (reputation, altruism) but also on the type of fees that are most favorable to settlements (result-based fees, time-based fees, fixed fees). Finally, a study of alternative dispute resolution methods is proposed. It establishes the conditions under which litigants prefer mediation to simple negotiation and arbitration to judgment. It then looks at the practice of arbitration by specifying the determining variables of the arbitration award and by comparing the adversarial and inquisitorial procedures in order to identify the one that minimizes the risks of error for the arbitrator.

This study is an economic analysis of producer liability rules as an instrument for preventing product-related accidents. Once it is accepted that legal rules influence the behaviour of individuals, it is interesting to highlight these effects using the instruments proposed by economic theory. After a brief discussion of the foundations of the economic analysis of law, the desirability of different forms of producer responsibility is first studied in the context of a simple model involving a producer and a consumer. Then, the model is progressively extended to take into account the possible existence of price maker firms, imperfect information or products with different levels of reliability. In the second part, the discussion focuses on the economic consequences of the recent evolution of producer liability rules in American, European and French law. These various regulations tend, to varying degrees, to favor a form of no-fault liability. However, this evolution does not always seem to be in conformity with the lessons of the economic analysis of the law, in particular in the case of fault on the part of the victim or of development risks. Correctly applied, a fault-based liability rule can minimize the total cost of accidents.