Responsabilidad de la Administración e incentivos

¿Debe responder el Estado por los daños causados en accidentes debidos, por ejemplo, al mal estado de las carreteras? Dari-Mattiacci, Garoupa y Gómez-Pomar dicen que imponer responsabilidad a los empleados públicos no mejora las cosas y que la responsabilidad del Estado puede empeorarlas por lo que una regla que haga soportar los daños a la víctima de los accidentes, aunque exista negligencia pública si el particular también actuó negligentemente puede ser la regla más eficiente

Imposing liability on the state may not simply fail to improve incentives; it may even dilute them. If the aim is the reduction of accidents, the traditional skeptic would go so far as to say that state liability will, in the worst case, leave the number of accidents unvaried. We argue instead that accidents may increase because, while failing to improve the incentives of the state officials and employees, state liability may well weaken the incentives of private parties, who can now rely on state compensation of their losses, State liability ends up functioning as a taxpayer-funded accident insurance, which will obviously create a substantial moral hazard problem on the part of those who can benefit from this implicit coverage. We show that a contributory negligence defense better counters these problems than other liability arrangements

The reality of legal systems shows that personal liability of the individual public employee is a rare occurrence, except for the most egregious cases of personal misconduct individually ascertainable… Immunities in state liability … protect the public budget from public officials who lack incentives to avoid misconduct and damages awards… in terms of compensation to injured parties and legal costs, is paid by taxpayers, not by the injurers

Contributory negligence makes the victim bear the full accident loss unless the victim takes the due level of care. Such level of care is the most convenient choice for the victim as it minimizes the accident loss given the actual behavior of the state, and hence minimizes the victim’s liability costs.