Sasha Volokh has a new article on Reason.org analyzing recent court cases defining the contours of antitrust immunity for market-participant-dominated regulatory boards. Here’s an excerpt: If all raisin producers got together in a room and privately agreed to limit the …

 Warnings continue to pile up for public pension funds with asset allocations that are heavily invested in equities and alternatives in order to maintain expected rates of return north of 7%.  A report last month for the world’s largest sovereign wealth …

Earlier this week, New Jersey’s gas tax increased 23 cents from 14.5 cents to 37.5 cents. The increase raised New Jersey’s gas tax from 49th highest in the nation to 6th. The actual gas tax increase was mitigated by elimination …

Mississippi’s Republican leadership have begun plans to overhaul their state’s 20 year-old education formula and replace it with a weighted student formula. Currently, the state uses the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP), a funding formula established in 1997, to allot …

The October 2016 edition of Reason’s Pension Reform Newsletter is now online. Topics covered in this issue include: Report Challenges Standard Public Pension Actuarial Practices Pension Obligation Bonds Increase Risk Teachers’ Pensions Are Unaffordable…for Teachers Dallas Bond Rating Downgraded Over Public …

A traditional conservative critique of public sector pensions usually includes some mention about how government workers, particularly teachers, are all bankrupting the system with their generous benefits. There are a few reasons why this is an overly simplistic narrative, including …

Today brings some positive pension news: Alaska’s governor has decided to halt an initiative to issue about $3.3 billion in pension obligation bonds. The plan proposed by Gov. Bill Walker was to target borrowing at a fixed rate of 4%, add …

As public sector pension plans have looked to supplement falling yields from bonds and equities, real estate has emerged as a top choice for alternative investment. Preqin – a large consulting company that specializes in alternative assets, such as real …

Fitch has recently downgraded the City of Dallas (Texas) bond rating in light of the worsening public debt of its police and fire pension fund. Meanwhile, The Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) – one of the most troublesome programs in …

When we look at troubled public pension plans in the U.S., we frequently see the same pattern: poor funding policies and faulty investment return assumptions that combine to drive growth in unfunded liabilities and volatility in the pension contribution rates …

The application of financial economics to pension actuarial practices has been controversial in the American actuarial circles. Hence, people paid attention when the American Academy of Actuaries (AAA) and the Society of Actuaries (SOA) jointly sponsored a pension finance task …