We find that mean municipal debt costs are greater following financial restatement disclosures. Comparisons of the relative use of municipal debt, and of the use of unsecured versus secured debt, corroborate that financial restatements increase the cost of municipal debt financing. Additional...

We investigate the determinants of content changes in municipal management discussion and analysis (MD&A) disclosures in terms of economic, governance, and regulatory characteristics. Similar to Brown and Tucker (2011), we calculate a difference score based on the degree to which municipal MD&As...

We investigate whether municipal financial manager turnover is associated with accounting restatements. This analysis is motivated by the notion that suspect financial reporting could limit the ability of stakeholders to assess the use of public resources (GASB, 2006). The evidence suggests that...

We investigate whether council audit committees relate to municipal fiscal policies. We find that municipalities with audit committees are associated with greater levels of own-source revenue, in that they finance municipal operations with locally raised revenues driven by charges and fees...