Determinants of the Duration of European Appellate Court Proceedings in Cartel Cases

25 Pages Posted: 8 Sep 2014

See all articles by Florian Smuda

Florian Smuda

ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Patrice Bougette

Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG

Kai Hüschelrath

ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Date Written: September 1, 2014

Abstract

The duration of appellate court proceedings is an important determinant of the efficiency of a court system. We use data of 234 firm groups that participated in 63 cartels convicted by the European Commission between 2000 and 2012 to investigate the determinants of the duration of the subsequent one- or two-stage appeals process. We find that while the speed of the first-stage appellate court decision depends on the court’s appeals-related workload, the complexity of the case, the degree of cooperation by the firms involved and the clarity of the applied rules and regulations, the second-stage appellate court proceedings appear to be largely unaffected by those drivers. We take our empirical results to derive conclusions for both firms that plan to file an appeal as well as public policy makers.

Keywords: Law and economics, antitrust policy, cartels, appeals, European Union

JEL Classification: K21, K41, K42, L41

Suggested Citation

Smuda, Florian and Bougette, Patrice and Hüschelrath, Kai, Determinants of the Duration of European Appellate Court Proceedings in Cartel Cases (September 1, 2014). ZEW - Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper No. 14-062, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2492942 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2492942

Florian Smuda (Contact Author)

ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research ( email )

P.O. Box 10 34 43
L 7,1
D-68034 Mannheim, 68034
Germany

Patrice Bougette

Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG ( email )

GREDEG CNRS
250, rue Albert Einstein
Valbonne, 06560
France

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/patricebougette/Home

Kai Hüschelrath

ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research ( email )

P.O. Box 10 34 43
L 7,1
D-68034 Mannheim, 68034
Germany

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