Description: Excel spreadsheet illustrating a specific proposal outlined in the paper, with detailed explanations.

Description: Defined benefit DB pension plans continue to dominate the retirement landscape for the roughly 20 million state and local government workers in the United States. In most state and local plans, pension benefits are protected by constitutional, statutory, or common law guarantees. In many cases, these guarantees make the benefit promises to participants virtually free of risk. Finance theory is unambiguous that the discount rate used to value future pension obligations should reflect the riskiness of the liabilities.

Description: Paper examines some of the underlying issues associated with public pension plan benefits and financing. It reviews concerns related to intergenerational equity and problems in maintaining the funded status of public DB retirement plans.

Description: This paper 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: The purpose of this paper is to explore a methodology for choosing among techniques for managing contribution volatility in defined- benefit pension plans. A frequently used – and as often criticized – method for managing contribution volatility is to base actuarial cost on smoothed assets. Our goal in this paper is to develop a methodology for measuring and evaluating the quantitative impact of competing asset smoothing policies. We proceed by investigating a series of basic pension metrics, evaluating the characteristics of each using a simulated pension plan. We then use normalized and weighted combinations of these metrics to determine an optimal smoothing policy.

Description: Part 4 presents an alternate approach to obtaining the fair value of the public sector employer’s pension benefit liability.

Description: Paper that discusses a new funding method that would make the recommended contribution for funding purposes for public DB plans subject to an overriding minimum contribution OMC calculation.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 symposium, January 2002. This paper presents data on the mortality, and mortality improvement trends, for retired U.S. Civil Service employees and their survivors, and analyzes the relationship to such factors as: Indexed final salary, Amount of indexed annuity, Total service at retirement, Duration on the Annuity Rolls, Retiree vs. beneficiary, Disability vs. non-disability.

Description: This paper presents a methodology that represents the common ground between the major camps in the debate over the defined benefits DB system.

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.