Department of justice antitrust enforcement, 1955-1997: An empirical study

This is an empirical study of Department of Justice (DOJ) enforcement of th e antitrust laws. Its purpose is fourfold: 1. To update Posner's study "A Statistical Study of Antitrust Enforcement'' (Posner, 1970, pp. 365-419). 2. To provide consistent and comparable measures of antitrust enforcement e ffort by the Department of Justice. 3. To report these measurements in a concise and systematic way in order to encourage empirical studies of antitrust issues. 4. To explore some implications for antitrust issues. The purpose is to present the overall historical record of DOJ antitrust ac tivity as well as some patterns in that history. More detailed analysis is left for future work. The following information for cases undertaken by the DOJ are reported: num ber of cases, choice of civil or criminal remedies, alleged violations, cor porate officials prosecuted, won-loss record, civil and criminal sanctions imposed, and length of the proceedings. The principal source of data is the CCH Trade Regulation Reporter, commonly referred to as the CCH Bluebook wh ich contains brief summaries of all DOJ antitrust cases in order of their f iling.