This paper examines empirically the effect of unfunded pension obligations on corporate share prices and discusses the implications of these estimates for national saving, the decline of the stock market in recent years, and the rationality of corporate financial behavior. The analysis uses the...

This short note emphasizes and illustrates two basic points: (1) The private costs of unemployment, i.e., the costs borne by the unemployed themselves, vary substantially and are often extremely low. This low private cost is an important cause of the permanently high unemployment rate in the...

The value of reported vested pension obligations depends critically on the interest rate a firm uses to discount future benefit obligations. Firms with substantial benefit obligations relative to existing pension assets tend to reduce the reported present value of their obligations by using a...