For decades, we have examined privatization with zeal and rigor. Relegated to the margins, however, have been inquiries into privatization's close cousin: direct government market participation. Given the ubiquity of government commercial transactions, the political, legal, and economic...

The last two decades have diverged from earlier experience, with many countries having peacetime deficits. Widespread deficits are shown to be linked to expansion of social programs, unmatched by tax revenue increases. Contributing to this were the output slowdowns in the 1970s, and inflation...

Pension systems are core institutional arrangements that are expected to be stable and reliable over consecutive generations. Nevertheless, reforms in pension provision intensified over the past decades, with several countries opting for privatisation of their pension system. We ask which...

California faces a significant pension-funding crisis. It has increased government-worker pensionbenefits repeatedly since the 1980s. Meanwhile, a California Supreme Court doctrine—theCalifornia Rule—has been understood to forbid cutting benefits for any currently employedgovernment workers,...

I study the history and performance of commercial real estate (CRE) in the pension fund portfolio, showing how many plan sponsors fundamentally changed their approach to CRE investment once underfunding gaps began to emerge in the early and middle 2000s. Several new empirical facts are...

Like a number of other states, Oregon has been hampered in its pension reform efforts since 1996 by its state supreme court's embrace of the “California Rule,” a doctrine arising, in Oregon's case, from a misunderstanding of federal Contract Clause precedent. Under the misreading, states...

There is considerable enthusiasm today for public options, particularly in the health care and banking sectors. A compromise between entirely private commercial provision and wholly bureaucratic, tax-and-transfer government provision, public options are designed to offer citizen-consumers...

Congress created the National Railroad Retirement Investment Trust (NRRIT) in 2001 to invest assets from the federal Railroad Retirement program in equities, expecting to improve returns and help fund expanded benefits. In designing the NRRIT, Congress tried to address concerns raised by...

There is currently a strong perception in the UK that public sector pensions are generous relative to those offered in the private sector, leading them to be branded "gold plated." This study argues that pensions should be considered deferred pay; as such any discussion on the relative...

This paper is about public sector pensions, an issue that has become increasingly contentious in a number of countries in recent years, including in the United Kingdom. In the UK the public debate has focussed on the perceived generosity of these pensions, which, it is often claimed, contrasts...