Accounting Numbers and Socioeconomic Variables As Predictors of Municipal General Obligation Bond Ratings
研究会计数字和社会经济变量能否预测市政一般义务债券的评级，发现以往会计数字预测效果不佳，并探讨了法律限制、财务报告多样性等可能原因。
Previous accounting research has not provided strong results that financial accounting numbers can be used to explain (predict) municipal general obligation bond ratings. For example, Michel [1977] concluded from his study that accounting numbers were relatively ineffective as predictors of bond classifications. While Raman [1981] and Copeland and Ingram [1982] found more positive results, their classification accuracies were considerably lower than those obtained in studies of corporate bond-rating changes.1 Several alternative hypotheses have been offered to explain this lack of modeling success. One is that differing legal restrictions over various general obligation issues cause a need for separate analyses of the different types (Stock and Robertson [1981]). Diversity in municipal financial reporting and degree of conformance with municipal GAAP, which impinges on the reliability of municipal financial data, is another. Finally, the poor performance in past modeling attempts has been attrib-