We study the reaction of low vs. high-skilled politicians to a reform, approved in Italy in 2011, that introduces stringent individual financial and career sanctions to local administrators who are judged responsible for their municipality’s bankruptcy. To this aim, we leverage exogenous...

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...

Using variation in federal pandemic-era fiscal aid to states driven by the strength of political representation, we find that incremental pandemic-era fiscal aid to states was most likely to end up in the categories of general administrative service spending and employee pension benefit funding....

We study the determinants of local governments' reliance on bank loans using granular data from the Federal Reserve. Governments that are larger, riskier, rely on historically stable revenue sources, or have higher spending relative to revenues are more likely to borrow from banks. Declines in...

The theory of fiscal federalism suggests that debt of subcentral levels of government is closely related to the internal organization of the country, defined through intergovernmental fiscal relations. Due to a great importance of subcentral levels of government in the theory and practice of...

Die steigenden Zinsen haben Auswirkungen auf die kommunalen Haushalte. Sie erhöhen die Kosten für Kredite und verteuern damit die Finanzierung notwendiger Investitionen in Infrastruktur und Transformation. Zwar dürfte der Großteil der Kommunen ausreichend Spielräume haben, um mit höheren...

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...

To carry out the analysis required for monetary policy, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) need comprehensive and reliable government finance statistics. The focus of government finance statistics has traditionally been the government as a whole...

Die steigenden Zinsen haben Auswirkungen auf die kommunalen Haushalte. Sie erhöhen die Kosten für Kredite und verteuern damit die Finanzierung notwendiger Investitionen in Infrastruktur und Transformation. Zwar dürfte der Großteil der Kommunen ausreichend Spielräume haben, um mit höheren...

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...

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...

Die finanzielle Schieflage der Kommunalfinanzen in Nordrhein-Westfalen (NRW) ist offensichtlich. Der kommunale Schuldenstand pro Einwohner in NRW lag Ende des Jahres 2022 mit 2.863 Euro deutlich höher als in den meisten anderen Bundesländern. Über 40 Prozent der kommunalen Schulden in NRW...

We study the determinants of local governments' reliance on bank loans using granular data from the Federal Reserve. Governments that are larger, rely on stable revenue sources, or have higher spending relative to revenues are more likely to borrow from banks. About a third of governments in the...

Over 2010-2016, municipal debt in Germany crowded out private investment worth 1 percent of GDP. Forced to lend to municipalities by their statutes, local public banks compensated for declining municipal-debt yields by charging higher rates to firms in Germany's locally segmented credit markets....

In diesem Gutachten wird die Finanzlage der Kommunen in NRW untersucht und systematische Unterschiede zwischen Kommunen mit und solchen ohne "Altschulden" herausgearbeitet. In einem zweiten Schritt wird untersucht, wie sich die aktuell erhöhte Inflation auf die wichtigsten Einzahlungen und...

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...

The average payment period (APP) is an important measure to monitor public sector liquidity and commercial debt sustainability. In the European Union, the relevance of APP as an indicator to mitigate those concerns was settled by the issuance of a Directive on this topic. Then, considering the...

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...

I examine the effects of public debt on municipal services and real outcomes during financial crises using a unique archival dataset of U.S. cities from 1924 to 1943. Unlike today's countercyclical fiscal policies, the Great Depression provides a rare setting to observe fiscal shocks without...

A substantial fraction of local governments refinance their long-term debt with significant delays - resulting in sizable losses. Using data from 2001 to 2018, we estimate that U.S. municipals lost over $31 billion from this delayed refinancing, whereas the entire U.S. corporate sector, facing...

We examine recent regulation requiring US municipal governments to disclose private debt. We show that governments fail to disclose 55-80% of reportable debt events and that, conditional on disclosure, filings often omit contract details essential for bond pricing. Non-compliant issuers are also...

This paper develops a cross-sectional neural network for municipal bond yields, filling a need to extrapolate yields on these illiquid assets. Using this neural network, counterfactual municipal bond yields are generated for all states such that the only difference in the bond issues is the year...