IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rje/randje/v27y1996iwinterp770-786.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Treble Damages and the Incentive to Sue and Settle

Author

Listed:
  • Hugh C. Briggs III
  • Kathleen D. Huryn
  • Mark E. McBride

Abstract

We apply Png's (1983) model to antitrust suits to determine the effects of private suits on government suits and vice versa. In equilibrium, a defendant can probabilistically signal a strong case by not offering to settle. A violator's incentive to signal a strong case to deter a treble damage suit forces the government to pursue more trials than it would otherwise. Private plaintiffs are more likely to settle following a government suit than otherwise, but they win a trial with the same probability regardless of whether there was a previous government suit. Data on private suits support the latter two contentions.

Suggested Citation

  • Hugh C. Briggs III & Kathleen D. Huryn & Mark E. McBride, 1996. "Treble Damages and the Incentive to Sue and Settle," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 27(4), pages 770-786, Winter.
    • Handle: RePEc:rje:randje:v:27:y:1996:i:winter:p:770-786
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0741-6261%28199624%2927%3A4%3C770%3ATDATIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M&origin=repec
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fotis, Panagiotis & Tselekounis, Markos, 2020. "Optimal Reduction of Cartel Fines induced by the Settlement Procedure," MPRA Paper 99154, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Michael Hellwig & Kai Hüschelrath & Ulrich Laitenberger, 2018. "Settlements and Appeals in the European Commission’s Cartel Cases: An Empirical Assessment," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(1), pages 55-84, February.
    3. Giorgio Rampa & Margherita Saraceno, 2014. "Beliefs and Precedent: The Dynamics of Access to Justice," DEM Working Papers Series 084, University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management.
    4. Andreea Cosnita-Langlais & Jean-Philippe Tropeano, 2018. "How procedures shape substance: institutional design and antitrust evidentiary standards," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 143-164, August.
    5. McAfee, R. Preston & Mialon, Hugo M. & Mialon, Sue H., 2008. "Private v. public antitrust enforcement: A strategic analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 1863-1875, October.
    6. Sylvain Bourjade & Patrick Rey & Paul Seabright, 2009. "Private Antitrust Enforcement In The Presence Of Pre‐Trial Bargaining," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(3), pages 372-409, September.
    7. Schinkel, M.P. & Tuinstra, J. & Rueggeberg, J., 2003. "Illinois walls," Research Memorandum 012, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    8. Schinkel, Maarten Pieter & Tuinstra, Jan, 2006. "Imperfect competition law enforcement," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1267-1297, November.
    9. Patrice Bougette & Christian Montet & Florent Venayre, 2006. "Jeux de négociation dans les affaires antitrust : engagements et transaction," Post-Print halshs-00476774, HAL.
    10. Thomas D. Jeitschko & Byung-Cheol Kim, 2013. "Signaling, Learning, and Screening Prior to Trial: Informational Implications of Preliminary Injunctions," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(5), pages 1085-1113, October.
    11. Andreea Cosnita-Langlais & Jean-Philippe Tropeano, 2014. "Institutional Design and Antitrust Evidentiary Standards," Post-Print hal-01668447, HAL.
    12. Claudio Calcagno, 2012. "Stand-alone private antitrust damages: (how) should competition authorities react?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 365-389, October.
    13. Heyes, Anthony & Rickman, Neil, 1999. "Regulatory dealing - revisiting the Harrington paradox," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(3), pages 361-378, June.
    14. Maarten Pieter Schinkel & Jan Tuinstra & Jakob Rüggeberg, 2008. "Illinois Walls: how barring indirect purchaser suits facilitates collusion," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(3), pages 683-698, September.
    15. Christopher C. Klein, 2007. "Anticompetitive Litigation and Antitrust Liability," Working Papers 200713, Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Economics and Finance.
    16. Gerard Llobet & Jorge Padilla, 2023. "A theory of socially inefficient patent holdout," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(2), pages 424-449, April.
    17. Tim Reuter, 2012. "Private antitrust enforcement revisited: The role of private incentives to report evidence to the antitrust authority," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2012-04, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rje:randje:v:27:y:1996:i:winter:p:770-786. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.rje.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.