Public pension funding has recently become a front-burner policy issue in the wake of the financial crisis and given the pending retirement of large numbers of baby boomers. This paper examines the current funding of state and local pensions using a sample of 126 plans, estimating an aggregate...

Most state and local retirement plans strive for full funding, at least by actuarial standards. Funding measured at market values fluctuates and often falls short. A common argument for full funding is that pensions are a form of deferred compensation that does not justify a debt. The paper...

This paper presents a dynamic model of a public pension fund's choice of portfolio risk. Optimal portfolio allocations are derived when pension fund management maximize the utility of wealth of a representative taxpayer or when pension fund management maximize their own utility of compensation....

The manifest purposes of integrating an employer-provided pension plan with social security are:(1) to ensure retirement income adequacy for all covered employees; and (2) to ensure retirement income equity, defined as equal total replacement rates for all employees regardless of salary level....

Some contend the US labor market will fail to adapt smoothly to an aging workforce, whereas others argue that employee pensions can and will play an important role in helping companies induce desired turnover patterns. This paper undertakes a longitudinal examination of pension retirement...

Using the known result that life-cycle investors will optimally hold portfolios whose returns are perfectly correlated with aggregate consumption, this paper uses a simple intertemporal general equilibrium model to explore the merits and feasibility of pension plans where both accumulations and...

In this paper we investigate why and to what extent the government should have a social security trust fund, and how it should manage the fund in the face of demographic shocks, based on a simple overlapping-generations model. We show that, given an aging population, a trust fund in some form...

This paper provides evidence on the investment behavior of 27 state pension plans that manage their own equity portfolios. Even though these state plans typically hold broadly diversified portfolios, they substantially over-weight the equity of companies that are headquartered in-state. The...

With over $1 trillion in assets, the U.S. Social Security trust fund is the largest pension reserve in the world, and potentially a model for other developed countries facing future financing problems. But are those assets actually worth anything?' This question has generated a heated debate in...

This paper provides a relatively nontechnical discussion of the effects of shifting from a pay-as-you-go system of Social Security pensions to a fully funded plan based on individual accounts. The analysis discusses the rationale for such a shift and deals with five common problems: (1) the...