Review: Public Pension Plan Funding: Can We Honor the Promises Made?
By Marguerite Schneider (more…)
04Feb
February 2017
04Feb
Changes in Funding Patterns by Latin American Banking Systems: How Large? How Risky? – Working Paper 420
By Liliana Rojas-Suarez & José María Serena This paper investigates the shifts in Latin American banks’ funding patterns in the post-global financial crisis period. To this end, we introduce a new measure of exposure of local banking systems to international debt markets that we term: International Debt Issuances by Locally Supervised Institutions. In contrast to well-known BIS measures, our new metric includes all entities that fall under the supervisory purview of the local authority. This is especially important in Latin...
04Feb
Can International Capital Standards Strengthen Banks in Emerging Markets?
By Liliana Rojas-Suarez Who should determine banks’ capital standards: authorities or markets? What is the right definition of core capital: equity only or equity plus subordinated debt? Can the assessment of banks' individual credit risks by external rating agencies be of equal or better quality than the assessments derived from banks' own internal rating systems? These are some of the key financial regulatory issues currently being discussed by analysts in industrial countries, especially in the context of the proposed modification...
03Feb
Funding Public Pension Plans
By Jonathan Barry Forman Most state and local government employees are covered by traditional final-average-pay pension plans. State and local government employers typically fund those pension plans through a combination of employer and employee contributions, with help from investment returns on already-accumulated assets. Unlike private sector pension plans, however, public pension plans are not subject to strict minimum funding standards like those in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). Public pensions also face more flexible accounting standards...
03Feb
The commitment value of funding pensions
By Jean Denis Garon This paper studies how funding public pensions can improve policy outcomes when short-sighted governments cannot commit. We focus on sustainable plans, where optimal nonlinear pensions are not reneged on by sequential governments. Funding pensions is a commitment mechanism. It implies lower contributions than does the second best policy, which reduces temptation to over-redistribute later and to misuse revealed private information. Funding may be preferable even if the population growth rate is higher than the rate of...
03Feb
Retirement and its funding
By Norton Reamer and Jesse Downing In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007–2009, investment was on people’s minds. From the fraud perpetrated by Bernie Madoff, to the mortgage crisis of 2007 and 2008 and the inadequate yields on “safe” bonds, it seemed as if no part of the economy had been more unsuccessfully managed or regulated than the part related to investing for our families’ futures. And yet, in the ensuing years, the stock market was making...