where ICW INDEX identifies internal control system deficiencies; AUDIT COMMITTEE is an indicator variable that is coded as 1 when an audit committee is in place; GOVERNANCE is a series of municipal governance provisions; and CHARACTERISTICS represents an array of other municipal-specific characteristics that potentially impact the financial reporting environment. Following Lopez and Peters (2010), we construct ICW INDEX in a way that captures the severity of
internal control weaknesses, where municipalities with at least one material weakness during our sample period of 2001 through 2004 are coded as 2, municipalities with at least one reportable condition (but no material weaknesses) are coded as 1, and municipalities with neither an internal control weakness nor a reportable condition are coded as 0. The analysis includes only one observation per municipality because internal control systems tend not to fluctuate, such that the dependent variable varies little from year to year