A Descriptive Analysis of the Municipal Advisors Market.

State and local governments often turn to municipal advisors for advice on financial matters. Municipal advisors include numerous types of firms and individuals, providing advice on a wide range of instruments, products, and strategies. The Dodd-Frank Act has broadened the jurisdiction of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board to include regulation of municipal advisors. This paper provides the first descriptive analysis of the entities that registered as municipal advisors under the temporary rules that were being applied pending a difinitive regulatory difinition of who is a municipal advisor, The results in this analysis are consistent with a market division between a small number of market-dominant advisors that offer a wide range of services and a larger number of smaller and more focused advisors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]