While it is generally understood that defined benefit pension systems concentrate benefits on career teachers and impose costs on mobile teachers, there has been very little analysis of the magnitude of these effects. The authors develop a measure of implicit redistribution of pension wealth...

In this article we focus on two questions: How well do teachers understand their current pension plans, and what do they think about alternative plan structures? The data come from administrative records and a 2006 survey of teachers in Washington State. The results suggest that Washington's...

The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to satisfy today's claimants in the here and now at the expense of long-term concerns. Teacher pensions, in particular, pose two challenges. The first is that political incentives invite irresponsible fiscal stewardship, as public...