PAYG and funding may and do coexist in social security systems. The proportions of this coexistence, however, are quite variable from country to country. The paper examines the US and a number of European countries, looking at both the present state and the foreseeable trends in future decades....

The regulation of private and public pension plans in the United States begins with the premise that employer-sponsored plans resemble traditional donative, or gift, trusts. Accordingly, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) famously “imports” major principles of...

This paper examines and evaluates the content and design of the annual pension statement sent to members of funded defined contribution (DC) pension schemes in a selection of OECD and non-OECD countries. The aims of the research are to identify the potential shortcomings in statement planning...

Employer-sponsored pensions, the second tier of the United States retirement system, ought to be a major source of lifetime income in retirement for many, if not most, Americans. However, while employer-sponsored pensions are mandatory or quasimandatory in many countries, they are voluntary in...

US state pension plans generally use overstated discount rates based on historical performance, creating the appearance of healthy funding at the cost of future underfunding. Conversely, adopting a US Treasury discount rate, or another alternative suggested by previous literature, would cause...