The Government As Litigant: Further Tests of the Case Selection Model

Theodore Eisenberg and Henry Farber
Additional contact information
Henry Farber: Princeton University

No 797, Working Papers from Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section.

Abstract: We develop a model of the plaintiff's decision to file a law suit that has implications for how differences between the federal government and private litigants and litigation translate into differences in trial rates and plaintiff win rates at trial. Our case selection model generates a set of predictions for relative trial rates and plaintiff win rates depending on the type of case and whether the government is defendant or plaintiff. In order to test the model, we use data on about 350,000 cases filed in federal district court between 1979 and 1997 in the areas of personal injury and job discrimination where the federal government and private parties work under roughly similar legal rules. We find broad support for the predictions of the model.

Keywords: case selection; litigation; trials (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://dataspace.princeton.edu/bitstream/88435/dsp01jd472w450/1/418.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Internal Server Error

Related works:
Journal Article: The Government as Litigant: Further Tests of the Case Selection Model (2003)
Working Paper: The Government as Litigant: Further Tests of the Case Selection Model (1999)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pri:indrel:418

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bobray Bordelon (bordelon@princeton.edu).