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The Effects of Political Competition on the Generosity of Public-Sector Pension Plans

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Abstract

In politically competitive jurisdictions, there can be strong electoral incentives to increase the generosity of public pensions and simultaneously, to not fund them fully, in order to keep taxes low. I examine the relationship between political competition and generosity of public pensions using a panel dataset for 3,000 municipal plans from Pennsylvania for the period 2003–2013. I find that as the level of political competition in a municipality increases, pension plans become more generous but this relationship holds true only for plans run by municipal governments. A one standard deviation increase in the level of political competition is associated with an increase in the generosity of municipal plans by about 3 percent ($426–507/retiree/year) with no effect on plans run by municipal authorities. The effects of political competition are driven by municipalities that have a higher proportion of uninformed voters and are absent for defined contribution plans.

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  • Sutirtha Bagchi, 2018. "The Effects of Political Competition on the Generosity of Public-Sector Pension Plans," Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series 38, Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics.
  • Handle: RePEc:vil:papers:38
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public-sector pensions; Political competition; Generosity of benefits; Defined benefit pensions; Defined contribution pensions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets

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