Should regulatory bank examinations be made public? Regulators have argued that the confidentiality of the examination process promotes frank exchanges between bankers and examiners and that public disclosure of examination results could have a chilling effect. I examine the tradeoffs in a world...

We show that state corruption and political connections have strong effects on municipal bond sales and underwriting. Higher state corruption is associated with greater credit risk and higher bond yields. Corrupt states can eliminate the corruption yield penalty by purchasing credit...