High disclosure standards are perceived to be the cornerstone of the U.S. securities markets. However. the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) prohibits the quantification of unproved reserves by U.S. oil and gas firms (based on the argument that it would mislead unsophisticated individual...

This article explains how event methodology can be applied in municipal finance research. Event methodology examines the impact of specific events on the rate of return on financial securities and can be utilized to study the impact of political, legal, and economic events on municipal bond...

This paper provides an introduction to and a review of governmental capital markets based research. It updates earlier studies and focuses on recent methodological developments. Prior research is classified ac­cording to the type of data used, emphasizing special topics that have received...

The most visible credit market measure of the fiscal health of a municipality is the credit rating. In this article we ask whether the credit rating fully incorporates the fiscal stresses faced by municipal governments. We utilize state "tax effort" as a measure of the fiscal stress faced by a...

Current practice regarding materiality in government audits under generally accepted auditing standards varies widely. In this empirical study, we investigate whether government auditors agree on an appropriate base for calculating materiality and what percentages they apply. In a government...

Since 1979, yields on new issues of long-term municipal debt have risen sharply both absolutely and in relation to yields on long-term corporate and U.S. Treasury debt. In contrast, yields on short-term municipal debt have risen only moderately and offer a relative bargain. Consequently, there...

Pension data for local governments are generally unavailable. Hence, prior re­search has relied on pension ratios as proxies for underfunding. In this paper, we utilize data from Pennsylvania where local governments are required to report unfunded obligations on an actuarial basis to a state...

This paper provides an empirical test of the association between the MFOA Certificate of Conformance and creditor decisions in the market for new municipal bond issues. We report that the certificate does have information content for creditor decisions, particularly for medium quality bonds

Corporate attempts at "managing" earnings have often involved the use of managerial judgment as to the appropriate event in the earnings cycle that is the critical one. In the municipal context, numerous opportunities exist to postpone or accelerate the outflow of liquid financial resources on a...

Prior research (Wallace, 1981 Wilson and Howard, 1984) has implicitly as­sumed that the impact of accounting information on municipal borrowing costs is the same across all bond rating groups. This paper provides empirical evidence that the demand for accounting information is a function of...