In this paper, we examine the impact of the charter form of government on the borrowing costs of local governments. A substantial amount of research has been undertaken to date in which scholars have investigated the determinants of borrowing costs for governments. However, little research has been conducted hitherto on the impact that the particular form of government – a key issuer characteristic – has on determining its specific borrowing costs. We hypothesized that a chartered government is more likely to be able to reduce its borrowing costs when it is benefiting from the municipal bond market; a government's flexibility and professionalism is desirable. We tested this hypothesis by using city and county government bond data from California that dates from 2003 to 2015. In our findings, we show that the financial flexibility that is afforded by a charter helps local governments to improve their credit ratings and to lower their borrowing costs.

中文翻译：

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租约形式是否会降低借贷成本？检查加州地方政府的案例

在本文中，我们研究了政府章程形式对地方政府借贷成本的影响。迄今为止，已经进行了大量研究，其中学者调查了政府借贷成本的决定因素。然而，迄今为止，关于特定政府形式（一个关键的发行人特征）对确定其特定借贷成本的影响的研究很少。我们假设特许政府在受益于市政债券市场时更有可能降低其借贷成本；政府的灵活性和专业性是可取的。我们使用加利福尼亚州 2003 年至 2015 年的市县政府债券数据来检验这一假设。在我们的研究结果中，