1. You can find the stats (and many other things, like employee counts by type/division, etc) in their annual report
2. No, actually. At least, not this much lower. The win rate is certainly limited by aggression in the extreme, but not as limited in practice as you might think.
Assume for a second the FTC historically only brought 50% of cases it had a 100% chance of winning (IE was not that aggressive).
If it now brought 100% of cases it had a 100% of winning, it would be much more aggressive (file twice as many cases), but the win rate would still be 100% :)
Now, obviously, if they were bringing 100% of cases they had a >50% chance of winning before (0% of cases with <50%), and now are bringing 100% of cases they had a >25% chance of winning before (0% of cases <25%), the win rate would go down a lot.
But the general view of experts (on both "sides", which includes some of their long time very-good very-experienced now-retired career attorneys ) is, basically
1. they were much closer to bringing 50% of the 100% win cases before.
2. they haven't moved to bringing 100% of the 100% win cases, they've moved to some totally strange and random distribution that is based more on press and politics. Microsoft/activision is a good example of this - their argument is very weak (basically that microsoft is monopolizing the cloud gaming business!?)
3. it would be a lot more effective to start by bring 100% of the 100% win cases, or 100% of the >95% win case or whatever, than what they are doing now. You can/should be a lot more aggressive, but still "feared" for winning.
I've put aside any of the other complicated factors to simplify the comment enough to answer your question effectively.
If anyone felt we were at the point they had been bringing 100% of >50% win rate case, and were now trying to bring 100% of >40% win rate cases, I think you'd see a very different perception occurring among experts.
The other complex disagreement (but is a bit of a sideshow given that) is not just on the approach overall, but the fallout from losing so much.
That argument, roughly, looks something like this on the legal side.:
A. The FTC has a tendency to file in a small number of courts (DC, California, Delaware).
B. It gets appealed to roughly the same courts as well
C. You end up in front of the same judges a lot
D. Being humans, they are not immune to bias (though again, these are much better judges than people give them credit for)
E. As a result, bringing crappy (IE 25% win rate) cases in front of them just doesn't just affect your current case, but also affects whether the 100% win rate case stays a 100% win rate case.
This is almost certainly true, and you can argue over the degree to which it's true.
We'll call this the "reputation effect on enforcement ability".
Similar argument about companies doing the calculus about their mergers and business practices, IE the "reputation effect on deterrence ability".
So even among the hawks (which i am, for example, but i'm an american school hawk, not a european school hawk :P) you end up with a view that you can be a lot more aggressive without either of these reputation effects, and you should start there, not with a randomized distribution that is in some sense more aggressive, but is unnecessarily causing serious reputation effects. This will, in turn, likely also enable you to turn 95% wins into 100% wins, etc.
2. No, actually. At least, not this much lower. The win rate is certainly limited by aggression in the extreme, but not as limited in practice as you might think.
Assume for a second the FTC historically only brought 50% of cases it had a 100% chance of winning (IE was not that aggressive).
If it now brought 100% of cases it had a 100% of winning, it would be much more aggressive (file twice as many cases), but the win rate would still be 100% :)
Now, obviously, if they were bringing 100% of cases they had a >50% chance of winning before (0% of cases with <50%), and now are bringing 100% of cases they had a >25% chance of winning before (0% of cases <25%), the win rate would go down a lot.
But the general view of experts (on both "sides", which includes some of their long time very-good very-experienced now-retired career attorneys ) is, basically
1. they were much closer to bringing 50% of the 100% win cases before.
2. they haven't moved to bringing 100% of the 100% win cases, they've moved to some totally strange and random distribution that is based more on press and politics. Microsoft/activision is a good example of this - their argument is very weak (basically that microsoft is monopolizing the cloud gaming business!?)
3. it would be a lot more effective to start by bring 100% of the 100% win cases, or 100% of the >95% win case or whatever, than what they are doing now. You can/should be a lot more aggressive, but still "feared" for winning.
I've put aside any of the other complicated factors to simplify the comment enough to answer your question effectively.
If anyone felt we were at the point they had been bringing 100% of >50% win rate case, and were now trying to bring 100% of >40% win rate cases, I think you'd see a very different perception occurring among experts.
The other complex disagreement (but is a bit of a sideshow given that) is not just on the approach overall, but the fallout from losing so much.
That argument, roughly, looks something like this on the legal side.:
A. The FTC has a tendency to file in a small number of courts (DC, California, Delaware).
B. It gets appealed to roughly the same courts as well
C. You end up in front of the same judges a lot
D. Being humans, they are not immune to bias (though again, these are much better judges than people give them credit for)
E. As a result, bringing crappy (IE 25% win rate) cases in front of them just doesn't just affect your current case, but also affects whether the 100% win rate case stays a 100% win rate case.
This is almost certainly true, and you can argue over the degree to which it's true.
We'll call this the "reputation effect on enforcement ability".
Similar argument about companies doing the calculus about their mergers and business practices, IE the "reputation effect on deterrence ability".
So even among the hawks (which i am, for example, but i'm an american school hawk, not a european school hawk :P) you end up with a view that you can be a lot more aggressive without either of these reputation effects, and you should start there, not with a randomized distribution that is in some sense more aggressive, but is unnecessarily causing serious reputation effects. This will, in turn, likely also enable you to turn 95% wins into 100% wins, etc.