The report provides a comprehensive analysis of Bulgaria's local public finances, focusing on key challenges faced by municipalities and potential reforms. The report's goal is to provide a better understanding of local fiscal capacity, the system of intergovernmental fiscal transfers, and...

How do financial markets respond to anticipated climate-driven wildfire risk? Using high-resolution meteorological forecasts, land use data, and U.S. municipal bond spreads, we find that municipalities facing greater future wildfire exposure already incur higher borrowing costs: A one standard...

How are financial markets responding to anticipated climate-driven wildfire risk increases? Combining high-resolution meteorological predictions and land use pattern maps with detailed US municipal bond data, this paper finds that municipalities facing higher future wildfire risk increases are...

Approximately 34% of local municipal bond issues were issued without ratings during 1998 to 2017. We study the circumstances that affect the decision to obtain a rating and whether unrated bonds, controlling for observable risk factors, are more expensive to issue than rated bonds. Issuers are...

Favorable tax treatment of coupon income, and unfavorable treatment of capital gains, lead municipal bonds to be issued with coupon rates substantially above market rates and an accompanying original issue premium. We present evidence that the size of the original issue premium is a response to...

According to data released by the RF Ministry of Finance, against the backdrop of deteriorating economic dynamic, the consolidated debt of the subjects and municipalities of the Russian Federation amounted to Rb3.16 trillion, or 2.09% of GDP, as of January 1, 2023. Despite an increase by Rb...

We show in this paper that tax exemptions on income from municipal bonds distort bank mortgage lending standards. Banks in states with a larger tax exemption hold more municipal bonds on their balance sheets. These holdings expose banks to local risks, in particular to real estate risk as...

I examine whether the imposition of fiduciary duty on municipal advisors affects bond yields and advising fees. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, I show that bond yields reduce by 9% after the imposition of the SEC Municipal Advisor Rule. Larger municipalities are more likely to...

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...

We investigate the role of information dissemination about cyberattacks through major newswires on municipal finance. Employing a difference-in-differences approach to identify causal effects, we find that county-level cyberattacks covered by the media cause increases in new offer yields and...

In this paper, we study how the political alignment between state governor party affiliation and counties affects yield spreads of municipal bonds issued by counties. Matching municipal bonds and gubernatorial election records at the county level, we present evidence that following close...

Natural resources are important assets in a region, and resource depletion may lead to the disappearance of local collateral, which may be priced by the capital market. This paper investigates the impact of resource depletion on the spread of municipal corporate bonds using data from the lists...

We examine the role of institutional investors in monetary policy transmission to asset markets by exploiting a discontinuous threshold in the tax treatment of municipal bonds. As bonds approach the threshold, mutual funds, the primary institutional traders in the market, dispose of the bonds at...

We examine the role of institutional investors in monetary policy transmission to asset markets by exploiting a discontinuous threshold in the tax treatment of municipal bonds. As bonds approach the threshold, mutual funds, the primary institutional traders in the market, dispose of the bonds at...

This paper examines mean and volatility spillovers between four green municipal bonds issued by the US states of California, Colorado, Columbia and Ohio, and the role played by the recent Covid-19 pandemic and the COP policy announcements respectively. Specifically, four-variate VAR-GARCH-BEKK...

We revisit the tax-loss selling hypothesis as an explanation of the January effect. We expand on prior empirical evidence from municipal bond closed-end funds (CEFs) by extending the sample period by 19 years and adding exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Our sample covers the introduction and rapid...

We show that dealer markups in the primary market for municipal bonds include risk premia that compensate dealers for bearing price risk. We also show that the markup per unit of risk tends to be higher for negotiated than competitive offerings, and that improvements in market transparency...

We study the effect of official statement textual complexity on municipal borrowing costs (yield) through the clientele channel. Theoretically, complexity reduces signal quality for unsophisticated investors, potentially increasing yield. We provide causal evidence of an economically significant...

Using a sample of Chinese municipal corporate bonds from 2011 to 2019, this paper investigates the effect of city-level air pollution on local government financing costs. We find that cities with severe air pollution tend to have higher municipal corporate bond spreads, indicating that air...

We study how regulation limiting ESG policies distorts financial market outcomes. In 2021 Texas enacted laws that prohibit municipalities from contracting with banks with certain ESG policies, leading to the exit of five of the largest municipal bond underwriters from the state. Issuers...

This paper examines mean and volatility spillovers between four green municipal bonds issued by the US states of California, Colorado, Columbia and Ohio, and the role played by the recent Covid-19 pandemic and the COP policy announcements respectively. Specifically, four-variate VAR-GARCH-BEKK...

Using California county-level data, we show that municipal bond yields became less sensitive to local real estate tax revenues following the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions imposed by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). This effect is more pronounced in counties where taxpayers were...