This paper provides an empirical test of the demand side of Thakor's (1982) theory of bond insurance signaling, namely that the insurance premium charged by municipal bond insurers provides a signal to the market that reduces asymmetric information in the market. We test the theory for a sample...

Corruption exacerbates state pension underfunding through all relevant aspects: a more generous pension benefit promise, lower actuarially required contributions (ARC), lower actual contributions, and poorer investment performance. By reducing corruption by one standard deviation from the mean,...

This study addresses the determinants of municipal secondary trade prices for state general obligation bonds issued during 2005-2010. I find that a two-component finite mixture model, as postulated in the hypothesis of price dispersion under market opacity, remains the best specification for the...

This study examines the relationship between underwriter placement risk and market transaction prices using a sample of state general obligation bonds. We proxy underwriter placement risk using three variables: “when-issued” trades, underwriter syndicate size, and bond sale method....

This paper demonstrates that capital markets take surrounding environments in the states into consideration when determining prices on local debt, above and beyond the underlying features of municipal bonds. We empirically show that corruption premium exists in the US municipal bond market....