Essays on the economic analysis of corporate civil liability

The accelerating pace of technological innovations and pressures from civil society provide tort law with new challenges. This thesis studies the incentive effects of tort law on corporate investment in prevention in this context. Particularly, this study deepens the traditional economic analysis of corporate civil liability and assess the effects of the combination of non legal sanctions and the legal framework. First, we highlight the evolution of the economic analysis of liability and responsibility. Then, we study the incentive effects of civil liability in a theoretical model, with a particular emphasis on the role of the legal notion of causality. Next, we examine to what extent the difficulties of predicting accident risks affect incentives provided by liability with both a theoretical model and with a lab experiment. In a theoretical model, we develop an analysis of the role of non-legal sanctions, from civil society, alongside the tort law. We show that the incentive effects of consumer boycott on corporate investment in prevention are limited. Finally, through an empirical study, we complete this analysis by studying the magnitude and determinants of consumer boycott in Europe. Keywords : Ambiguity, boycott, causality, care, institutional