Abstract
Either Mayor–Council or Council–Manager forms of governance operate most cities in the US, with a slow trend toward Council–Manager cities. Theoretical modeling suggests that the Council–Manager form should be more efficient, since the city manager has greater incentives to increase financial and accounting performance relative to the mayor as chief executive officer. However, two sets of factors may be more important for municipal comparisons. Since the mid-1980s, regulations of state and local governments have intensified. At the same time, economic conditions improved dramatically. Consequently, these two factors might be more relevant to evaluate the fi- nancial and accounting conditions in large cities. The purpose of this paper is to test the significance of governance structure on accounting disclosure levels and financial condition, based on samples of large cities from the early 1980s and the mid-1990s. The findings support the perspective that city manager cities substantially outperform Mayor–Council cities on major dimensions examined in both univariate and multivariate tests. Large municipalities improved on key financial and accounting variables from 1983 to 1996. Council–Manager cities maintained superiority over Mayor–Council cities for accounting disclosure in both periods. Council–Manager cities were signifi- cantly better in financial condition in 1983, but the evidence for 1996 was mixed.
