Prévention ou innovation ? Vers une nouvelle définition de la gestion publique des risques technologiques

Abstract

This essay aims at reviewing the contributions of the economic analysis of civil liability to the issue of public management of technological risks. Academics have mainly studied how civil liability can provide optimal incentives to control the level of risk. However, the role of technological change and innovation has been neglected. Innovation enables to improve the efficiency of risk prevention on the long run: to provide optimal incentives for such activities is highly important for an optimal regulation on a long-term perspective. In the late 2000s, Alfred Endres began to analyze how innovation alters the optimal setting of civil liability in a context of pollution control. In this essay, we show the relevance of such an approach in a context of risk regulation, and we highlight how the regulation of risky activities has to be distinguished from the regulation of polluting activities.