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Politics And Public Pension Funds
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Book Synopsis Politics and Public Pension Funds by : Roberta Romano
Download or read book Politics and Public Pension Funds written by Roberta Romano and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis State Fiscal Constitutions and the Law and Politics of Public Pensions by : Amy Monahan
Download or read book State Fiscal Constitutions and the Law and Politics of Public Pensions written by Amy Monahan and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pension plans for state and local employees are, as a whole, significantly underfunded. This underfunding creates intense fiscal pressure on governments and often either crowds out other desired governmental spending or results in employees and retirees losing earned benefits. Political theorists often explain that underfunded public pension plans are all but inevitable given the political realities that affect funding decisions. Politicians who desire to be reelected should rationally prefer to spend money on current constituents, rather than commit scarce funds to a pension plan to pay benefits due to workers decades in the future. These dynamics are exacerbated by existing state fiscal constitutions that require balanced budgets and often restrict the ability to raise taxes. Paying a pension plan less than the amount due provides an easy way to free up money in the state budget by creating a form of debt that is not reflected on the state's balance sheet. This article presents original analysis of the effect that state fiscal constitutions - even those that contain explicit requirements to fund public pension plans - impact public pension funding dynamics. It finds that even where explicit constitutional funding requirements are in place, plans often continue to be underfunded both because of political and financial pressures, and also because of the distinct lack of an enforcement mechanism. The article concludes by suggesting that these weakness in pension funding requirements can be addressed through the creation of clear and objective funding standards and, most importantly, through the creation of enforcement mechanisms that can, where appropriate, override legislative decisions to underfund public pension plans.
Book Synopsis The Political Economy of Public Pensions by : Eileen Norcross
Download or read book The Political Economy of Public Pensions written by Eileen Norcross and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-02 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public pensions in the United States face an impending funding crisis in the wake of the financial crisis and the COVID-19 recession. Many cities and states will struggle to meet these growing obligations without major cuts in government services, reneging on pension promises, or raising taxes. This Element examines the development of the pension crisis through the lens of political economy. We analyze the knowledge and incentive problems inherent in the institutional structure, governance, and accounting of public pensions. We conclude by offering several institutional, governance, and reporting reforms to address the pension funding crisis.
Book Synopsis The Political Economy of Pension Reform by : Evelyne Huber
Download or read book The Political Economy of Pension Reform written by Evelyne Huber and published by Conran Octopus. This book was released on 2000 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since pension schemes-along with health care and education-absorb the largest amount of social expenditure in all countries, their reform has a potentially major impact both on the fiscal situation of the state and on the life chances of citizens who stand to win or lose from new arrangements. This makes pension reform a highly controversial issue; and, except for the addition of new programmes and benefits, major restructuring of existing pension systems has been extremely rare in advanced industrial democracies. It was also rare in Latin America before the 1980s and 1990s. But there has been a great deal of experimentation within the region during the past decade. This paper examines the larger economic, social and political context of Latin American pension reform and compares experiences in different countries of the region with options available in Western European societies during the same period. The authors argue that the type of pension reform undertaken in Latin America has been an integral part of the structural adjustment programmes pursued by Latin American governments, under the guidance of international financial institutions (IFIs). Although there was a range of possible remedies to the problems of pension systems in different Latin American countries, neo-liberal reformers and the international financial institutions preferred privatization over all others. They claimed that privatization would be superior to other kinds of reform in ensuring the financial viability of pension systems, making them more efficient, establishing a closer link between contributions and benefits and promoting the development of capital markets-thus increasing savings and investment. And they were able to push through some of their suggestions for reform in spite of considerable opposition from pensioners, trade unions and opposition political parties. Interestingly enough, their pressure proved least effective in the more democratic countries of the region. In Costa Rica, for example, citizens preferred to reform the public system-eliminating the last pockets of privilege for public sector workers and ensuring that new levels of contribution would be adequate to provide minimum benefits for the aged and infirm. In Uruguay, citizens forced a public referendum, through which they rejected a proposal for privatization. At a later stage, they did permit the introduction of private investment accounts, but not at the cost of eliminating the public programme. In Argentina and Peru, after the legislature refused to authorize partial privatization, this was eventually pushed through by presidential decree. Only in Chile and Mexico has there been a complete shift to private pension funds-but, in both cases, influential sectors of the elite, including the military, have been allowed to keep their previous, publicly managed group funds. Looking at the only privatized pension system in existence long enough to allow for some assessment of its consequences-that of Chile-the authors find that many of the claims made by supporters of privatization are not substantiated by the evidence. The first discrepancy between neo-liberal predictions and the reality of Chilean pension reform has to do with efficiency. All previous claims to the contrary, private individual accounts have proven more expensive to manage than collective claims. In fact, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, by the mid-1990s administration of the Chilean system was the most expensive in Latin America. The second disproved claim involves yield. When administrative costs are discounted, privately held and administered pension funds in Chile show an average annual real return of 5.1 per cent between 1982 and 1998. Furthermore high fees and commissions-charged at a flat rate on all accounts-have proven highly regressive. When levied against a relatively modest retirement account, for example, these standard fees reduced the amount available to the account holder by approximately 18 per cent. When applied to the deposit of an individual investing 10 times more, the reduction was slightly less than 1 per cent. The third discrepancy involves competition. Although it was assumed that efficiency within the private pension fund industry would be associated with renewed competitiveness-while the public pension system represented monopoly-the private sector has in fact become highly concentrated. The three largest pension fund administrators in Chile handle 70 per cent of the insured. And to reduce advertising costs, public regulators are limiting the number of transfers among companies that any individual can make. A fourth unfulfilled promise of privatization in Chile has to do with expansion of coverage. It was assumed that the existence of private accounts would increase incentives for people to take part in the pension sc heme, but in fact this has not happened. Coverage and compliance rates have remained virtually constant. A fifth major claim was that the conversion of the public pension system into privately held and administered accounts would strengthen capital markets, savings and investment. But a number of studies have recently concluded that, at best, this effect has been marginal. And finally, the dimension of gender equity within a fully privatized pension scheme is being subjected to increasing scrutiny. Women typically earn less money and work fewer years than men. Therefore, since pension benefits in private systems are strictly determined by the overall amount of money contributed to them, women are likely to receive considerably lower benefits. Public pension systems, in contrast, have the possibility of introducing credits for childcare that reduce this disadvantage. Sweden is an example of countries that have embarked on this course. In the latter part of the paper, Huber and Stephens widen their comparative framework to include recent pension reforms in advanced industrial countries. There, where economic crisis was not as severe and where pressure from international financial institutions was not significant, much broader options for reform were available. In fact, although long-established systems were under stress, no developed country opted for complete privatization. Complex measures were taken to strengthen the funding base of national pension systems, including changes in investment procedures and changes in rules for calculating pension benefits. Reforms also increased retirement age, as well as the number of years required to qualify for a full pension. But even the most thoroughgoing reforms retained a central role for public schemes in ensuring old-age benefits. In conclusion, the authors consider steps that can be taken to craft pension reforms with more desirable results than those obtained to date in Latin America. They recommend measures that address the problem of an aging population by increasing the ability of each generation to pay for its own pensions-rather than relying primarily on the contributions of preceding generations of insured workers. Pension payments should be invested in a variety of financial instruments and benefits must ultimately be related to the yields obtained. Such a strategy does not require introduction of privately managed, individually held, investment funds. On the contrary, risk is lessened by relying instead on collectively managed funds, in which accounts can either be identified with individuals or-more equitably-with generations of contributors. Reformed public pension systems should also contain minimum "citizenship pensions" that guarantee subsistence income in old age to all individuals as a matter of right. Such a measure, financed from general tax revenue rather than from personal contributions, is not beyond the means of medium income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. In fact, some Nordic countries introduced citizenship pensions when their GNP per capita was lower than that of most Latin American countries today.
Book Synopsis Governance of Public Pension Funds by : David Hess
Download or read book Governance of Public Pension Funds written by David Hess and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An understanding of corporate governance theory can promote the adoption of appropriate governance tools to limit agency problems in public pension fund management. The absence of a market for corporate control hinders the translation of lessons from the private sector corporate world to public pension governance. The establishment of a fit, and proper governing body for public pension funds, thus may be even more important than the maintenance of a comparable body for private sector corporations. In particular, behavioral controls should be carefully designed.
Book Synopsis Upgrading the Investment Policy Framework of Public Pension Funds by : Dimitri Vittas
Download or read book Upgrading the Investment Policy Framework of Public Pension Funds written by Dimitri Vittas and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2008 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Public pension funds have the potential to benefit from low operating costs because they enjoy economies of scale and avoid large marketing costs. But this important advantage has in most countries been dissipated by poor investment performance. The latter has been attributed to a weak governance structure, lack of independence from government interference, and a low level of transparency and public accountability. Recent years have witnessed the creation of new public pension funds in several countries, and the modernization of existing ones in others, with special emphasis placed on upgrading their investment policy framework and strengthening their governance structure. This paper focuses on the experience of four new public pension funds that have been created in Norway, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. The paper discusses the safeguards that have been introduced to ensure their independence and their insulation from political pressures. It also reviews their performance and their evolving investment strategies. All four funds started with the romantic idea of operating as 'managers of managers' and focusing on external passive management but their strategies have progressively evolved to embrace internal active management and significant investments in alternative asset classes. The paper draws lessons for other countries that wish to modernize their public pension funds.
Book Synopsis Political Determinants of Evolution and Reform of the German Public Pension Plan by : Nicole Petrick
Download or read book Political Determinants of Evolution and Reform of the German Public Pension Plan written by Nicole Petrick and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009-08 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 1,3, Humboldt-University of Berlin, 13 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The paper discusses the evolution and reform of the German public pension plan in respect to its history, theoretical approaches to explain the choice and evolution of pension plans and takes current issues in account in order to evaluate the suggestions made and to show what political determinants influence future reform. Part 1 of this paper will give a short review of the history of the German public pension plan between the late 19th century and today. Part 2 will show how decisions made in the past could be explained and will use political approaches to explain the choice and evolution of pension schemes and pension reform. Part 3 of this paper will then consider the current problems faced by the pension system and will discuss different proposals made. It will consider the current situation of the German public pension plan and will use political determinants in order to examine how the future reform of the public pension fund in Germany could develop. A small critique will be given at the end.
Book Synopsis The Future of Public Employee Retirement Systems by : Gary Anderson
Download or read book The Future of Public Employee Retirement Systems written by Gary Anderson and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-08-13 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People covered by public pensions are often the subject of 'pension envy:' that is, their benefits might seem more generous and their contributions lower than those offered by the private sector. Yet this book points out that such judgments are often inaccurate, since civil servants hold jobs with few counterparts in private industry, such as firefighters, police, judges, and teachers. Often these are riskier, dirtier, and demand more loyalty and discretion than would be required of a more mobile labor force in the private sector. The debate challenges traditional ideas about how the public employee labor contract is structured and raises questions about how such employees are attracted to the public sector, retained and motivated on the job, and retired, via an entire compensation package of wages and benefits. Authors explore aspects of these schemes, addressing the cost and valuation debate, along with the political economy of how public pension asset pools are perceived and managed, an increasingly important topic in times of global financial turmoil. The discussion also explores ways that public pensions can be strengthened in the US, Japan, Canada, and Germany. The volume captures a vigorous debate currently underway by academics, financial experts, regulators, and plan sponsors, all seeking to define a new future for public retirement systems. It will be of substantial interest to a wide range of readers, since public sector employees and their representatives will naturally find the comparisons and arguments over valuation of keen interest. Public pension administrators and policymakers seeking an explanation of what makes these plans so costly will gain a new understanding of how the arguments stack up. Private sector employers and plan sponsors can learn much from efforts to reform these retirement systems in states and countries around the world. Finally, investors and the taxpaying public more generally may be at risk to cover these long-term promises, so it behoves them to pay close attention to the financing and investment practices of these plans, along with their valuation. This volume represents an invaluable addition to the Pension Research Council / Oxford University Press series as it includes actuarial, economic, and financial perspectives making it useful for academics, retirement plan administrators, and public employees wishing to understand the challenges facing public pensions.
Book Synopsis Retiring the State by : Raúl L. Madrid
Download or read book Retiring the State written by Raúl L. Madrid and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1990s, numerous Latin American nations privatized their public pension systems. These reforms dramatically transformed the way these countries provide retirement income, and they provoked widespread protests from workers and pensioners alike. Retiring the State represents the first book-length study of the origins of this surprising trend. Drawing on original field research, including interviews with key policymakers, Madrid argues that the recent reforms were driven not by social policy, but by macroeconomic concerns. Countries facing growing financial pressures chose to privatize their pension systems largely to boost their domestic savings rates and reduce public pension spending in the long run. The author explores his arguments through detailed case studies of pension reform in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, a survey of social security privatization efforts in East Europe and Latin America as a whole, and a quantitative analysis of pension privatization worldwide.
Book Synopsis A History of Public Sector Pensions in the United States by : Robert Louis Clark
Download or read book A History of Public Sector Pensions in the United States written by Robert Louis Clark and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2003-05-12 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Wharton School, offering a comprehensive assessment of the political and financial dimensions of public-sector pensions from the colonial period until the emergence of modern retirement plans in the twentieth century.
Book Synopsis U.S. Public Pension Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Trustees and Investment Staff by : Von M. Hughes
Download or read book U.S. Public Pension Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Trustees and Investment Staff written by Von M. Hughes and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2019-07-26 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive guide to mastering the roles and responsibilities of a public pension fiduciary in the U.S. In an ever-changing financial and political landscape, your job as a public pension fiduciary continues to get more difficult. Now, you have the help you need. U.S. Public Pension Handbook is the only one-stop resource that covers the various areas of public pension governance, investment management, infrastructure, accounting, and law. This comprehensive guide presents critical data, information, and insights in topic-specific, easy-to-understand ways—providing the knowledge you need to elevate your expertise and overall contribution to your pension plan or system. U.S. Public Pension Handbook covers: •Today’s domestic and global public pension marketplace•The ins and outs of the defined benefit model, the defined contribution, and hybrid pension designs•Financial concepts central to the actuarial valuation of pension benefits•Public pension investment policies and philosophies•Asset allocations and how they have changed over time•State and local government pension contribution policies•The impact of governance structure and board composition on organizational results•Fiduciary responsibility and the general legal/regulatory framework governing trustees•How changes in trust law may affect public pension trustee fiduciary responsibility and liability•Best practices in pension governance and organizational design Public pension trustees are the unsung heroes of the world of finance, collectively managing over $6 trillion in retirement assets in this country alone. U.S. Public Pension Handbook provides the grounding you need to make sure you perform your all-important with the utmost expertise and professionalism.
Book Synopsis Rethinking Public Pension Reform Initiatives by : Mr.Peter S. Heller
Download or read book Rethinking Public Pension Reform Initiatives written by Mr.Peter S. Heller and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1998-04-01 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper argues that there are significant risks, limitations, and complications associated with reliance upon mandatory DC, fully funded schemes as the dominant public pension pillar. Policies to limit risks may result in the government being reinjected into playing an important financial role in the provision of social insurance. For many countries, the principal source of old age support should thus derive from a well-formulated, public DB pillar, with a significant amount of prefunding. A DC/FF pillar can play a useful supplemental role in a multi-pillar system for the accumulation of pension savings.
Book Synopsis Public Pension Funds and the Politics of Capital Formation in Sweden by : Jonas Pontusson
Download or read book Public Pension Funds and the Politics of Capital Formation in Sweden written by Jonas Pontusson and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Public Pension Plans written by and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Political Economy of Public Pension Funds and Investment Privatization by : Riddhi Mehta-Neugebauer
Download or read book The Political Economy of Public Pension Funds and Investment Privatization written by Riddhi Mehta-Neugebauer and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past decade, alternative assets such as private equity have been growing rapidly, twice as fast as the growth in public markets. Private equity’s growth has significant consequences for our economy and our ability to hold corporate power accountable. Through a combination of high levels of debt and other people’s institutional capital, private equity is able to acquire and operate a growing percentage of our economy, with very little skin in the game – all of which can raise concerns about the rise of business power and the societal structures in place to contest its growth. One avenue in which private equity’s business power could be challenged is through labor’s retirement capital. Depending on the specific constellation of constituents represented on a pension fund’s investment board and the power imbalance associated with that structure, concerns about headline, political, and reputational risks can expand the set of conventional market factors that challenge private equity investment allocation – or further investment privatization – and hold the industry accountable. This dissertation presents an analysis that speaks to private equity’s growing power and explores ways in which that power can be contested. The first paper showcases how private equity’s own business model, that relies on debt and opacity, facilitates the strengthening of its extractive business power. Empirical examples within the energy sector trace how these mechanisms operate through three levels of private equity’s extraction – through the extraction of natural resources, the extraction of labor’s retirement capital, and the extraction of a company’s value through rent-seeking behaviors. The latter two papers focus on the role of public pension funds as not only private equity’s largest investors, but also as key arenas for contestation. The second paper explores how the power dynamics and preferences within the public pension fund investment board, between plan participant and financial elite trustees, impacts the capital growth of private equity. I adopt a mixed-methods approach that uses compositional covariates to model the effects of board composition and pension fund sector on the probability of investment privatization as well as the portfolio share invested in alternative assets across 82 U.S. state-level public pension funds from 2001 to 2017. The results suggest that increasing participant trustee representation, particularly on those investment boards associated with more social movement unions (public-sector and teachers’ investment boards) can curtail investment privatization, whereas increasing elite trustee representation on the same investment boards, can spur investment privatization. This effect is clearest when investment boards are contending whether to privatize investment, rather than how much they will allocate to alternative assets. The third paper takes a more structural approach and explores how the power dynamics within the state – both through alliances between labor unions and gubernatorial partisanship as well as broader social mobilizations – impact private equity’s capital allocation from public pension funds. Using tobit models of over 80 state-level public pension funds, again between 2001 and 2017, the findings suggests that after the Occupy Wall Street mobilization, there was a partisan difference between pension fund investment privatization, compared to before Occupy. The findings suggest that pension funds in states with Democratic governors and high union strength tended to reduce investment privatization. Whereas pension funds in states with Republican governors and high union strength were associated with increasing investment privatization of public funds.
Book Synopsis Pension Fund Politics by : Jon Entine
Download or read book Pension Fund Politics written by Jon Entine and published by A E I Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows that pension funds and mutual funds that screen investments according to social and ethical preferences frequently harm those people and causes (for example, the poor and the environment) that they are designed to help.
Author :United States. President's Committee on Corporate Pension Funds and Other Private Retirement and Welfare Programs Publisher : ISBN 13 : Total Pages :152 pages Book Rating :4.3/5 (91 download)
Book Synopsis Public Policy and Private Pension Programs by : United States. President's Committee on Corporate Pension Funds and Other Private Retirement and Welfare Programs
Download or read book Public Policy and Private Pension Programs written by United States. President's Committee on Corporate Pension Funds and Other Private Retirement and Welfare Programs and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: