We analyze the role of liability, insurance, and side payments for independent safety controls with unobservable care levels. By independent safety controls we mean that the accident probability depends on the care levels of two parties, and that the effects of the controls on the accident...

The economic analysis of tort law is extended to multi-party accidents with unobservable actions. Due to the requirement of no punitive damages, the problem resembles a team production problem. It is shown that asymmetry in the agents' impact on the stochastic damage function can be exploited to...