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,...