Th.--Droit--Paris 2, 1979.

Texte remanié: Th. doct.--Droit--Poitiers, 2002. / Bibliogr. p. 371-395. Index.

Texte remanié de: Thèse de doctorat--Droit privé--Clermont-Ferrand 1, 2006. / Bibliogr. p. 453-499. Index.

Th.--Droit--Paris, 1969. / Bibliogr. p. 269-288.

Texte remanié de: Thèse de doctorat--Droit--Nantes, 2004. / Bibliogr. p. 463-515. Index.

Texte remanié de: Thèse de doctorat--Droit privé--Lille 2, 2004. / Bibliogr. p. 659-680. Index.

Le résumé en français n'a pas été communiqué par l'auteur. / This thesis is composed by three chapters, each one addressing a policy question originated in the complex nature of public sector's objective function. In the first chapter, a policymaker intends to auction divisible goods among large and small bidders. On top of being concerned about maximizing surplus of auction participants, he also wants to avoid concentrated allocations. Motivated by actual practices on the field of spectrum auctions, this chapter examines standard auctioning policies, composed by auction formats (uniform price or Vickrey) and devices to favour groups of bidders (price discounts or quantity restrictions). The chapter relates the choice of the auction format and the favoring devices with the relative weight that the policymaker assigns to surplus maximization and outcome concentration. More generally, this work highlights the role of bidders’ market power in smoothing the effect of asymmetries. The second chapter compares the adoption of labor incentive policies in the public and the private sector. I build a general equilibrium model in which the private and the public sector need to attract workers to produce private and public goods respectively. In a moral hazard framework, standard profit maximizing leads firms to provide incentives to workers whose expected production is above a threshold. Even though information rents are not per-se costly for a welfare maximizing Government, providing incentives may attract too many workers to the public sector, creating a problem of talents allocation. This tradeoff justifies the choice of an output threshold different than the one in the private sector for giving incentives to workers. Finally, in the third chapter, a Government privately informed about its level of commitment intends to attract a foreign investor to undertake a costly oil project with price-driven risk. I show that a Government with high level of commitment does not have enough contracting elements to separate from a less committed type that is not credible enough to allow the investor recover his sunk cost. Still, a project can be feasible when Government types pool their offers at the cost of compensating the investor with an expropriation premium. I find that contingent taxation can be used to minimize the exposure to such cost. An optimal contract keeps investor's profits constant at the highest level that can be credibly sustained by a low commitment Government in most states of nature, and compensates the investor with higher profits when prices are high enough.

Cette thèse comporte quatre chapitres. Le premier chapitre étudie l’effet de prendre une décision irréversible dans un environnement incertain. Ces travaux montrent qu'avec la possibilité d'ajuster le niveau du service à la hausse, le niveau de service initial sera moins élevé que lorsque un ajustement n'est pas possible. Le deuxième chapitre étudie les implications d'une aversion au risque sur un contrat d'acquisition d'un service de base et des acquisitions supplémentaires. Dans ce chapitre, nous caractérisons l'effet sur le design du contrat du risque qui vient de l’information incomplète sur l’acquisition supplémentaire. Nous montrons que le niveau du service de base et des acquisitions supplémentaires sont des substituts dans la résolution du problème d'incitation et que l'aversion au risque implique moins de distorsions sur les deux niveaux comparé au cas de neutralité vis-à-vis du risque. Le troisième chapitre étudie l'effet d'un risque de faillite sur une acquisition dynamique. Le contrat financier optimal est étudié ainsi que le contrat optimal d'acquisition lorsqu'il y a une entreprise autofinancée et une entreprise en difficulté de trésorerie. Le contrat d'acquisition reflète l’arbitrage entre des politiques industrielles visant à stimuler l'activité de ce secteur, et des politiques de concurrence qui ont pour objectif de réduire les prix le plus possible. Le dernier chapitre illustre le lien entre les chapitre 2 et chapitre 3 en montrant que le comportement d'une entreprise qui est averse au risque à la Yaari (1987) peut être modélisé comme une utilité indirecte lorsque l'entreprise est neutre vis-à-vis du risque mais fait face à une risque de faillite. / This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter investigates the effect of making an irreversible decision in an uncertain environment. Irreversible initial provision levels can be supplemented according to the true surplus generated by the provision. With add-ons, the first-period provision will be lower than when no additional adjustments are possible. Thesecond chapter studies the implications of risk aversion on an optimal procurement contractfor a basic service and an add-on. Ex ante there is incomplete information about the add-onand agents are risk averse. We characterize the effect on contract design of risk stemmingfrom this incomplete information. We show that the level of the basic service and the add-onact as substitutes in solving the incentive problem and risk-aversion leads to less distortion inboth levels compared to the risk-neutral case. The third chapter studies dynamic procurement design and the effect of bankruptcy risk on this design. Firms differ in their ability to self financetheir presence in the market. I study the optimal financial contract for the firm in needof funding as well as the optimal procurement contract. Because of the bankruptcy risk, the procurement contract will reflect a trade-off between industry policy which aims at stimulating activity in a sector, and competition policy which focuses on keeping prices as low as possible. The last chapter illustrates the link between chapter 2 and 3 by showing that firmbehavior under risk-aversion à la Yaari (1987) can be derived as an indirect utility when arisk-neutral firm faces liquidation risk.

Texte remanié de: Th. doct.--Droit privé--Toulouse 1, 2000. / Bibliogr. p. 719-746. Index.

Texte remanié de: Th. doct.--Droit privé--Paris 10, 2001. / Bibliogr. p. 305-322. Index.