Municipal bonds trade in opaque, decentralized broker-dealer markets in which price information is costly to gather. Whether dealers in such a market operate competitively is an empirical issue, but a difficult one to study. Data in such markets is generally not centrally recorded. We analyze a...

The effective functioning of the municipal bond market is crucial for the provision of public services, as it is the largest capital market for state and municipal issuers. Prior research has documented tax, credit, liquidity, and segmentation effects in municipal bonds. Recent regulatory...

Should legislation ban the negotiated sales of municipal bonds? What are the costs of forcing public auctions? We compare the offering yields of local governments that are forced by state law to use public auctions to the offering yields of local governments that can choose between auctions and...

The effective functioning of the municipal bond market is crucial for the provision of public services, as it is the largest capital market for state and municipal issuers. Prior research has documented tax, credit, liquidity, and segmentation effects in municipal bonds. Recent regulatory...