We examine the presence of short-termism in the asset allocation decisions of U.S. private defined benefit pension plans. We document an inverse U-shaped relationship between a plan's allocation to fixed income securities and its funding ratio, centered on a 80% funding ratio, and show that the...

The authors measure the aggregate state of the economy using variables motivated by the macro-finance literature. In particular, they focus on three specific measures: macro-growth, fragility, and volatility. Macro-growth, a procyclical measure, combines information from a series of...