We calculate increases in contributions required to achieve full funding of state and local pension systems in the United States over 30 years. Without policy changes, contributions would have to increase by 2.5 times, reaching 14.1 percent of the total own revenue generated by state and local...

During the last quarter of 2008, financial losses in state pension funds varied from 12 percent to 68 percent of the revenue generated by the state government. We quantify a sovereign default channel in the state municipal market by examining how changes in bond spreads vary with state pension...