In response to a request from the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission, we propose a model to estimate default probabilities for bonds issued by cities. The model can be used with financial data available in Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports that cities are required to...

I study whether bailouts of local governments carry electoral benefits for state governments with a dataset covering 421 municipalities in the German state of Hesse over the period 1999-2011. I find that past bailouts have no economically significant effect on the municipality-level vote share...

Since 1991, public finance of the Colombian Central Government reveals an explosive pattern in the burden in terms of GDP of interest payments of public debt, reaching levels over 4%. This behavior is deeply connected with a debt financing public policy based on issuing public debt in the...

This study empirically finds, using ECM, that the primary federal budget deficit shares a bi-directional relationship with the ex ante real interest rate yield on long term municipal bonds. That is, the primary budget deficit acts to raise the real municipal bond yield whereas that yield also...

We show that voters are fiscal conservatives, although in the long run only: while the average (over the mandate) level of debt has a negative impact on the probability of reelection, pre-election debt accumulation by incumbents increases their probability of reelection. As the negative impact...

Using a half century of data, this empirical study adopts a simple loanable funds to investigate the impact of the budget deficits on the ex post real interest rate yield on high grade municipal bonds in the U.S. Autoregressive 2SLS estimates for the 1960-2012 study period find that the ex post...

This study examines the debts of the municipalities of the Mexican state of Jalisco from an institutional and economic perspective. We find that fiscal institutions and institutional processes are often incomplete and inadequate. We also find that: 1) The municipalities that borrow the most are...

Our paper explores the risks that arise due to indebtedness of Hungarian local governments. Our analysis relies on interviews conducted with the heads of the local government business branches of the credit institutions most important in terms of local government financing and on the related...

The analysis presented in this paper deals with two main issues: the one of debt sustainability, meant in the particular acceptation proposed in this article, and the one of the effects of debt decumulation for the various territorial communities, in particular for the weak areas of Italy...

This paper demonstrates the appropriate way in which to translate a tax-free interest rate yield into an equivalent taxable interest yield when there is not only a federal income tax to account for but also a state income tax as well. The results shown indicate the importance of allowing for...