Determinants of the Duration of European Appellate Court Proceedings in Cartel Cases

Abstract: The duration of appellate court proceedings is an important determinant of the efficiency of a court system. We use data of 263 appeals decisions referring to 54 cartels convicted by the European Commission between 2000 and 2012 to investigate the determinants of the duration of the subsequent one- or two-stage appeals process.
We find that while the speed of first-stage appellate court decisions depend, inter alia, on authority-related factors such as the complexity of the case, the clarity of the applied rules and regulations and previous or simultaneous US investigations, the second-stage appellate court proceedings appear to be largely unaffected by those drivers.