Empirical Assessment of the Importance of the Factors Affecting the Litigation Antitrust Cases' Results

The Bachelor’s Thesis contains 86 pages, 6 tables, and 5 appendixes. Key words: antitrust policy, competition, judges’ incentives, antitrust legislation, antitrust service, judicial branch, executive power. The object of the study are final antitrust cases’ judicial decisions, and the subject of the paper are factors, influencing those decisions. The research aims to evaluate the key factors, influencing final antitrust cases’ results provided by courts. Therefore, the research focuses on the analyzing the theoretical framework, formulation of the hypotheses; development of a methodology of empirical analysis and the system of criteria in order to evaluate the influence of several factors on the arbitration court cases’ results; collection of the data and creation a database containing the quantitative and qualitative description of antitrust cases; providing a statistical analysis of the database; and making an econometrical model. This study is providing evidence on several tendencies and factors, influencing the process of the judicial control of antitrust policy: a. Experience of specialization affects the final decision of the court. b. Experience of the party of the judicial process increases the probability of its winning. c. More "complicated" cases have the higher probability of acquittal in favor of the company, which is the applicant. d. Reducing material sanctions weakens the incentives of the accused companies of protection of their interests in court. e. Hypotheses about the systematic bias of judges in favor of the state regulator were not confirmed. f. The results described above question the assumption of independence of judges in arbitration courts from political influence. g. Bias towards making satisfying decisions in favor of the state power was not confirmed. h. There is the influence of the time of getting the basic legal education in terms of a certain stage of economic reforms on the decision-making process.