Following Baber and Gore (2008), we consider the potential impact of state disclosure regulations on internal control quality by using indicator variables equal to 1 for municipalities located in states that require compliance with GAAP accounting standards (GAAP), and those with no municipal reporting requirements
(UNREGULATED). Both variables are set to 0 for municipalities in states with hybrid or state-specific municipal accounting requirements. The influence of state monitoring in general is considered by including the amount of state support to localities (STATE LEVEL SUPPORT), defined as the average ratio of state revenue to total revenue for all municipalities in a given state. Finally, proxies for municipal characteristics include DEBT PER CAPITA as the total log of debt per capita, and municipal SIZE as the log of population. Values for independent continuous variables are computed using 2001 to 2004 means for each municipality, and are winsorized at the 1 percent (99 percent) tails of the distribution.