We examine if the effectiveness of business tax subsidies varies based on state disclosure laws. The prior accounting literature on government disclosure documents substantial variation in the quality of such disclosures, raising questions about their effectiveness for monitoring. State and local business subsidies for investment and employment have tripled in size over the past 30 years, but transparency problems inhibit clear assessments of whether subsidies achieve their intended outcomes. We examine both internal disclosure laws, which mandate subsidy reporting by the granting state agency to other state oversight agencies, and external disclosure laws, which mandate reporting to the public. We find positive effects of subsidies on local employment when subsidies are subject to internal disclosure laws; by implementing such regimes, governments could forego 1.2–1.7 subsequent subsidies per county, saving $419.0–$593.5 million in aggregate. In contrast, we observe little effect of external disclosure, which we show is due to governments either substituting to other types of incentives or posting stale information that impedes public monitoring. We contribute to the government disclosure literature by demonstrating the real employment effects of internal government disclosures, and we provide policy‐relevant evidence about the conditions under which external disclosure regimes facilitate public monitoring.

中文翻译：

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税收补贴披露和当地经济影响


我们研究了营业税补贴的有效性是否因各州的披露法律而异。先前关于政府披露的会计文献记录了此类披露的质量存在很大差异，这引发了对其监控有效性的质疑。在过去 30 年里，各州和地方企业对投资和就业的补贴规模增加了两倍，但透明度问题阻碍了对补贴是否达到预期结果的明确评估。我们研究了内部披露法和外部披露法，前者要求授予的国家机构向其他国家监督机构提供补贴报告，后者要求向公众报告。我们发现，当补贴受内部披露法的约束时，补贴对当地就业有积极影响;通过实施此类制度，政府可以放弃每个县 1.2-1.7 次后续补贴，总共节省 4.19.0 至 5.935 亿美元。相比之下，我们观察到外部披露几乎没有影响，我们表明这是由于政府要么用其他类型的激励措施来替代，要么发布阻碍公众监控的陈旧信息。我们通过展示政府内部披露对就业的真正影响，为政府披露文献做出贡献，并提供有关外部披露制度促进公众监控的条件的政策相关证据。