Transparency in state debt disclosure

Wen Wang and Bo Zhao

No 17-10, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Abstract: We develop a new measure of relative debt transparency by comparing the amount of state debt reported in the annual Census survey and the amount reported in the statistical section of the state Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). GASB 44 requires states to start reporting their total debt in the CAFR statistical section in FY 2006. However, states are allowed to use accounting choices to exclude some dependent agencies? debt, which contributes to a gap between the two data sources. The regression results suggest that the gap tends to increase when states face greater fiscal stress or less political competition. Such patterns are not found in the pre-GASB 44 period.

Keywords: fiscal transparency; state debt; GASB; accounting choices; dependent agencies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H74 H83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2017-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-de ... debt-disclosure.aspx Summary (text/html)
https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/Workingpapers/PDF/2017/wp1710.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedbwp:17-10

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Spozio ().