Announcing a large fiscal stimulus may signal the government’s pessimism about the severity of a recession to the private sector, impairing the stabilizing effects of the policy. Using a theoretical model, we show that these signaling effects occur when the stimulus exceeds expectations and...

Public-sector pension plans administered by CalPERS face scrutiny because of large unfunded liabilities. The current underfunding is usually blamed on investment losses that occurred during the recent economic downturn. This paper finds that the true culprit is inaccurate actuarial forecasting,...