Economic foundations of a security policy: the example of crime risk.

Summary The aim of the thesis is to establish the theoretical foundations of a security policy, and then to mobilize them in the particular case of crime risk. To do so, we first give an economic status to security, by conceiving it as a capability, in Sen's sense, and by subjecting it to an axiomatic. We then construct a "demand function" for security, which has two components: one is based on institutional evaluations . the other on agents' evaluation of risk, which we model in the framework initiated by Kahneman and Tversky. In the case of crime risk, whose historical evolution we first analyze, a security "supply function" is then constructed, based on a model of temporal allocation between legal and illegal activity. Thus, we can compare, first in a theoretical way, the supply and demand functions obtained. Then, a numerical application is carried out, allowing us to propose an allocation of public resources between two forms of expenditure intended for sensitive urban areas: education expenditure, on the one hand, and police expenditure, on the other.