Description: Part 5 addresses various purposes for measuring a public sector pension liability and which measures have the most practical usefulness.

Description: Retirement plan trustees are tasked with retirement plan administration. Trustees are responsible for hiring service providers and monitoring the quality of their work. This article discusses actuarial audits as a due diligence tool for public plan trustees.

Description: The article presents a number of approaches to communicating and discussing risk with employer and retirement board members.

Description: Discussion of competing theories for valuing public pension liabilities. Emphasis on revised Actuarial Standards of Practice that focus on the purpose of the measurement.

Description: The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the virtues of “marked-to-market” pension accounting are greatly exaggerated for both public and private pension plans. It is demonstrated that the “marked-to-market” paradigm, as applied to pensions, is based on a questionable economic foundation and may produce plenty of “misinformation” of its own. From the Pension Section News, September 2008, Issue No. 68.

Description: This paper presents the details of the actuarial implications of amendments to the Railroad Retirement Act. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1952, Vol. 4, No. 10.

Description: Paper presents two alternative practices that could promote fuller recognition of a plan’s investment risks and that take into account the long-term nature of the benefit promises of maturing retirement systems.

Description: Abstract of paper that addresses the issue of the manner in which financial resources are measured within government budgets, how this measurement of resources might affect public budget decisions, and how the interaction of the budget with the actuarial model can lead public budge managers to engage in financially damaging transactions such as pension obligation bonds.

Description: Article The 1979 Annual Report of the Trustees Of the U.S. Social Security Programs by Bartlett in The Actuary, June 1979, Volume 13, Number 6

Description: This is the discussion to the paper, The Actuarial Implications of the 1951 Railroad Retirement Amendments by Joseph Musher. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1952, Vol. 4, No. 10.