We examine how coordination between elected officials and voters impacts local governments' borrowing costs. Using the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as an identifying shock that implicitly raised the cost of local public goods for residents, we show in a difference-in-differences framework that the...

Scholars and commentators have argued that municipalities can and should use bankruptcy to shed unwanted liabilities, particularly employee healthcare and pension commitments. Courts increasingly have agreed: Detroit's approved bankruptcy plan cut pensions, and the bankruptcy court overseeing...

We will collect audited financial and socioeconomic data for a large sample of local governments between 2008 and 2016 to create a fiscal scoring system for cities and counties based on our previous work, work done by Pew and the leading academics. City and county scores will be reported on a...