This paper examines which municipal disclosures provide informational value to investors. Using the entire universe of post-issuance financial and event disclosures from 2009 to 2022, we find that most municipal bonds do not trade in the weeks following a disclosure. However, some disclosures do provide enough new information to increase trading. Investors trade more on credit-relevant disclosures, such as adverse credit event disclosures, and less on required annual financial statements. Trading after disclosures also increases more when a bond is large or risky. Moreover, we find that credit rating agencies respond to disclosures, lending support to the idea that some disclosures have informational value. In further analyses, we find that trading before the disclosure, lack of timeliness, illiquidity, and information processing constraints contribute to the limited trading on the average disclosure. The findings suggest that reconsidering a one-size-fits-all approach to regulating post-issuance municipal disclosures may be worthwhile.

We develop and estimate a two-sided matching model of auditors and clients. We find evidence that auditors and clients engage in matching based on their preferences on both observable and unobservable characteristics. This matching appears to partly explain the “Big 4 effect” on audit outcomes: after controlling for the effects of matching, we find that the positive influence of having a Big 4 auditor on serious restatements and serious comment letter conversations with the SEC either weakens or disappears. Collectively, our results highlight the importance of accounting for two-sided matching between auditors and clients in understanding the influence of auditors on clients’ financial reporting practices.