Retirement plans can create strong financial incentives that have important labor market implications, and many states have adopted alternative plan designs that significantly change these incentives. The authors use longitudinal data to investigate the impact of Washington State's 1996 introduction of a hybrid retirement plan on late-career…

Defined benefit (DB) pension plans incentivize "salary spiking," where sharp increases in pay are leveraged into significantly higher levels of retirement compensation. While egregious instances of salary spiking occasionally make headlines, there is little guidance on the definition of salary-spiking behavior or understanding of its…

Over the last two decades, twenty-two states have moved away from traditional defined benefit (DB) pension systems and toward pension plan structures like the defined contribution (DC) plans now prevalent in the private sector. Others are considering such a reform as it is seen as a means of limiting future pension funding risk. It is important to…

Most public school teachers in the United States are enrolled in defined benefit (DB) pension plans. Using administrative microdata from four states, combined with national pension funding data, we show these plans have accumulated substantial unfunded liabilities--effectively debt--owing to previous plan operations. On average across 49 state…

Most public school teachers in the United States are enrolled in defined benefit (DB) pension plans. Using administrative microdata from four states, combined with national pension funding data, we show these plans have accumulated substantial unfunded liabilities--effectively debt--owing to previous plan operations. On average across 49 state…