The Duration of Civil Cases. A Survival Analysis

Abstract

Duration estimates about the duration of judicial cases are usually initiated by eliminating all those observations in which at least one of the two relevant dates (beginning or ending of the procedure) are unknown. This method tends to produce a bias in the estimations. Thus, in this paper we make an application of Survival Analysis to assess the duration of civil cases in Argentina (Capital Federal and Santa Fe). We use Kaplan-Meier Product Limit Method to estimate survival functions (i.e duration) of the cases and then proceed to analyse the explanatory power of several variables in that duration, using a Cox Proportional Hazard Regression.