How Long Is Too Long? Disentangling the Disposition of Antitrust Cases in the U.S. Federal Courts

Abstract

The contribution of this study is to disclose the main determinants of the duration of the U.S. antitrust federal court decisions, an issue that has been nearly overlooked by most related studies. As an indirect measure for the time needed to dispose cases, this study uses the duration of the case from the filing of the complaint to the date of the opinion. Using this metric, we employ parametric and nonparametric panel data techniques on a sample of 613 appellate court proceedings on U.S. antitrust cases during the period 1995–2018. The empirical research reveals spatial heterogeneity in terms of case duration among the circuits of the appellate U.S. courts. The econometric analysis supports that the duration of appellate antitrust court decisions depends on administrative-related factors including the way the case was filed in the circuit, the jurisdiction in the case, the “ pro se” representation of the undertakings, and the nature of the final judgment. Lastly, based on the flexible semi-parametric analysis, we argue that the impact of these parameters on case duration is linear, regardless of the specification of the parametric part of the model.