The economic consequences of GASB financial statement disclosure
研究了政府会计准则委员会（GASB）第68号准则要求县郡披露养老金义务后，那些原本未披露的县郡减少了公共福利支出、就业和薪资支出，表明财务报表披露改变了地方政府的决策。
We examine whether Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) financial statement disclosure alters local governments' economic decision-making. To do so, we exploit a recent GASB standard that eliminated differences in the disclosure requirements for county governments' pension obligations. The standard, GASB 68, had no effect on pension economics or the annual budget—it affected only whether and how information was presented on GASB financial statements. Using a broad hand-collected dataset, we document that counties that did not disclose information about their pension obligations before GASB 68 reduced public welfare expenditures, employment, and salary expenses relative to those that had disclosed such information. We conduct extensive field research and employ several cross-sectional analyses to conclude that the effects we document are in part driven by increased awareness of the financial costs of pension obligations by newly disclosing counties.