TY  - JOUR
AU  - Eisenberg,Theodore
AU  - Farber,Henry S.
TI  - The Government as Litigant:  Further Tests of the Case Selection Model
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7296
PY  - 1999
Y2  - August 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7296
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7296.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Henry S. Farber
Industrial Relations Section
Firestone Library
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544-2098
Tel: 609/258-4044
Fax: 609/258-2907
E-Mail: farber@princeton.edu
AB  - 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.
ER  -