Les coûts des expertises judiciaires dans les procédures inquisitoire et accusatoire

We compare the inquisitorial and the adversarial procedures, in a framework close to the one of Dewatripont and Tirole [1999], according to two criteria : the expected cost of expertise and the expected cost of errors. Our main contribution concerns the cost of the research efforts of the experts. We assume that an expert may benefit from economies of scale during the conduct of his expertise. When economies of scale are important, the expected cost of expertise is lower in the inquisitorial procedure. For lower values of the economies of scale, the results are ambiguous. The expected cost of errors is lower in the adversarial procedure. Thus, our results show that, during the choice of the procedure to be used, there may be a trade-off between the expected cost of expertise and the expected cost of errors. Classification JEL : K40, D81.