IIPF Director, Research Fellow, and UIS Political Science Professor Present Paper on Race, Gender & Municipal Bond Pricing at 2019 Midwest Political Science Association Conference

IIPF Director Dr. Kenneth Kriz, IIPF Research Fellow Dr. Arwi Kriz, and UIS Political Science Professor John Transue presented a paper on race, gender, and municipal bond pricing at the 2019 MPSA conference held in Chicago. Drs. Transue, Kriz, and Kriz analyzed data from over 300 city bond issues during the period 2005-2010. They obtained data about the race and gender of the cities’ mayors, city administrators or managers, and finance directors and analyzed whether those variables affected the cost of borrowing for the city, or it’s municipal bond credit rating. After controlling for other variables that could affect borrowing cost and credit ratings, the researchers were not able to identify a statistically significant relationship between borrowing cost and any of the variables of interest. However, they were able to identify relationships between Hispanic and Female finance directors and credit ratings. Cities with a Hispanic finance director tended to have higher credit ratings after controlling for other explanatory variables, while cities with Female finance directors had slightly lower credit ratings.

The presentation is available on the Academic Papers & Presentations page.