Does transparency enhance government trustworthiness or create problems?
This article examines a key tension in American politics: sunshine laws promote accountability but may reduce effectiveness.
Through clever research design,
we leveraged temporal variations in state legislative exemptions to study this dilemma.
Our empirical findings during 1995-2010 revealed something unexpected:
Key Finding: Removing transparency actually reduced investors' risk perception for state bonds.
This suggests a surprising reality: shielding debates might improve fiscal outcomes.
