Department of Justice Antitrust Enforcement, 1955—1997: An Empirical Study

This is an empirical study of Department of Justice(DOJ) enforcement of the antitrust laws. Its purposeis fourfold:1. To update Posner's study ``A Statistical Study ofAntitrust Enforcement' (Posner, 1970, pp. 365–419).2. To provide consistent andcomparable measures of antitrustenforcement effortby the Department of Justice.3. To report these measurements in a concise andsystematic way inorder to encourage empiricalstudies of antitrust issues.4. To explore some implications for antitrustissues.The purpose is to present the overall historicalrecord of DOJ antitrust activity as well as somepatterns in that history. More detailed analysis isleft for future work.The following information for cases undertaken by theDOJ are reported: number of cases, choice of civil orcriminal remedies, alleged violations, corporateofficials prosecuted, won-loss record, civil andcriminal sanctions imposed, and length of theproceedings. The principal source of data is theCCH Trade Regulation Reporter, commonly referred toas the CCH Bluebook which contains briefsummaries of all DOJ antitrust cases in order of theirfiling.