Retirement System

Challenges in Pension Governance: A Case Study of the New Hampshire Retirement System
$85.00
As the scope of the current financial crisis dwarfs the recession of 1991, public retirement systems face momentous pressures. In a number of cases, the roots of these funding problems can be traced to actions taken during the recession 18 years earlier. This study of the New Hampshire Retirement System chronicles a series of events in 1991-92 which led to a $2.4 billion unfunded liability by 2007. The study depicts trustees, legislators and stakeholders in crisis. Transcripts and interviews give readers an inside view of a struggle to adhere to fiduciary duty in the face of relentless political pressure. Events in New Hampshire during the recession of 1991 were not unique; researchers found that a number of states sought to balance budgets by reducing pension contributions during that period. This study sets New Hampshire?s experience in the context of those findings as it portrays a system of pension governance under stress. Now, the impending retirement of the Baby Boomers coincides with a global financial crisis. This examination of the past may serve to inform the present, as public pension systems face the challenges ahead.

The Future of Public Employee Retirement Systems
$90.00
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 behooves 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.

Separation and Retirement Incentives in the Federal Civil Service: A Comparison of the Federal Employees Retirement System and the Civil Service Retirement ... (Rand Corporation//Rand Monograph Report)
$15.00
In 1987 a new retirement system, called the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), was introduced for federal civil service personnel. Some observers have hypothesized that FERS would alter the retirement and separation outcomes produced by FERS' predecessor, the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). This report compares the retirement and separation incentives embedded in FERS versus those in CSRS to see whether the incentives embedded in FERS are consistent with these hypotheses. It also examines which system is more generous in terms of providing greater expected net lifetime earnings and retirement wealth. To compare the systems, the authors compute expected net wealth associated with different separation and retirement ages for a representative individual. The authors also conduct sensitivity analyses to see how their comparisons differ under alternative assumptions. Finally, the authors use

The Alchemy of Trading Systems
$19.95
A little book about how to get started working with technical trading systems. Useful for both the beginner and the active trader, this book gives you an "in" into trading system lingo, setup, and marketing finished products.