In the municipal bond market, announcements of changes in general obligation bond ratings by the rating agencies are typically made con­currently with announcements of new bond issues. Hence, prior research on the information content of municipal bond rating change announcements is subject to...

Organization's environmental uncertainty induces greater variability in reported earnings, and accentuates the information asymmetry between managers and outside stakeholders. Managers have the incentives to reduce such variability via income smoothing and hence reduce information asymmetry for...