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100			_aOmstedt, Mikael _957360
245			_aReading risk: _bPractices, limits and politics of municipal bond rating/
260			_bSage, _c2020.
300			_aVol. 52, Issue 3, 2020 ( 611–631 p.)
520			_aThis article contributes to the growing literature on the relationship between local governments and financial markets by demystifying the municipal bond rating process. Since the Great Recession, the dynamics of municipal debt have moved to the forefront of American urban politics and the pursuit of high bond ratings has become a key mechanism constraining local policy autonomy. However, we know little about the actual practices of the rating agencies. Drawing on interviews conducted within these organizations, the article examines the criteria, processes and organizational practices that produce ratings. In conversation with calls for bridging the divide between political economy and techno-cultural approaches to markets, the paper shows how bond rating is structured by an ever-present tension between the need to understand localized investment risk in all its place-specific complexity while striving to fit that risk within the standardized grid of the rating scale. Further, the analysis highlights the imperative of budget flexibility through which indebted local governments are pushed into self-disciplining of their finances. As such, the article unpacks a particularly opaque area of local politics and furthers ongoing conversations between financial geography and urban political economy.
773	0		_08877 _917103 _dLondon Pion Ltd. 2010 _tEnvironment and planning A _x1472-3409
856			_uhttps://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X19880903
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999			_c14410 _d14410