The Political Economy of Municipal Pension Funding

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Brinkman, Jeffrey; Coen-Pirani, Daniele; Sieg, Holger
• 署名单位: Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Philadelphia; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); University of Pittsburgh; University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.20160400
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 215-246
• 关键词: public-goods; debt; GOVERNMENT; state; MODEL; taxation; POLICY; taxes; retirement; EFFICIENCY

摘要

Many US municipalities have committed to pay retirement benefits to public sector employees but have not saved enough to fulfill these obligations. This paper studies the determinants of municipal pension funding and its implications for intergenerational redistribution using an overlapping generations model. Under perfect capital markets, pension funding choices are fully capitalized into land prices. This neutrality result fails if agents face a binding downpayment constraint in the land market: old agents prefer a pay-as-you go system, while young agents find a fully funded system optimal. Empirical evidence based on cross-city comparisons of pension liabilities is consistent with these predictions.