This paper calculates the effect that introducing risk-sharing during either retirement or the working life would have on public sector pension liabilities. We begin by considering the introduction of a variable annuity for the retirement phase, modeled on the Wisconsin Retirement System, in...

Better measurement of the output produced and capital employed by firms substantially improves the ability to explain capital structure variation in the cross section. For every firm, we construct the set of other firms producing the same output using the set of product market competitors listed...

Using a novel dataset that records individual debt issues on the balance sheets of public firms, we demonstrate that traditional capital structure studies that ignore debt heterogeneity miss substantial capital structure variation. Relative to high-credit-quality firms, low-credit-quality firms...

The value of pension promises already made by US state governments will grow to approximately $7.9 trillion in 15 years. We study investment strategies of state pension plans and estimate the distribution of future funding outcomes. We conservatively predict a 50% chance of aggregate...

I exploit sharply nonlinear funding rules for defined benefit pension plans in order to identify the dependence of corporate investment on internal financial resources in a large sample. Capital expenditures decline with mandatory contributions to DB pension plans, even when controlling for...

Using a novel data set that records individual debt issues on the balance sheet of a large random sample of rated public firms, we show that a recognition of debt heterogeneity leads to new insights into the determinants of corporate capital structure. We first demonstrate that traditional...

This paper analyzes the flow of state pension benefit payments relative to asset levels and contributions. Assuming future state contributions fund the full present value of new benefits, many state systems will run out of money in 10–20 years if some attempt is not made to improve the funding...

Institutional investors exhibit substantial home-state bias in private equity. This effect is particularly pronounced for public pension funds, where overweighting amounts to 9.8% of aggregate private-equity investments and 16.5% for the average limited partner. Public pension funds' in-state...