IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/indrel/qt8c82g4hf.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Interest Groups on the Inside: The Governance of Public Pension Funds

Author

Listed:
  • Anzia, Sarah F.
  • Moe, Terry M.

Abstract

A subversive line of new scholarship in American politics argues that interest groups need to be brought to the analytic center of the field once again. This paper attempts to further that agenda. We reconnect with an older literature of great importance—on capture, subgovernments, and interest group liberalism—to study interest groups as insiders that play routine, officially recognized roles as part of government itself. Our empirical focus is on staterun public pension boards: which control trillions of dollars, have vast fiscal and social consequences, and are commonly designed to give public employees and their unions official roles in governing their own pension systems. We develop a theory arguing—contrary to existing scholarly work—that these groups can actually be expected to favor policies that undermine the fiscal integrity of these plans. Through an analysis of key decisions by 99 pension boards over the period 2001-2014, we show that this is in fact the case—and that, for public-sector pensions, these “interest groups on the inside” wield genuine influence that weakens effective government.

Suggested Citation

  • Anzia, Sarah F. & Moe, Terry M., 2016. "Interest Groups on the Inside: The Governance of Public Pension Funds," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt8c82g4hf, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:indrel:qt8c82g4hf
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/8c82g4hf.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mitchell, Olivia S & Smith, Robert S, 1994. "Pension Funding in the Public Sector," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(2), pages 278-290, May.
    2. Robert Novy-Marx & Joshua D. Rauh, 2009. "The Liabilities and Risks of State-Sponsored Pension Plans," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(4), pages 191-210, Fall.
    3. Barry T. Hirsch & David A. MacPherson, 2003. "Union Membership and Coverage Database from the Current Population Survey: Note," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 56(2), pages 349-354, January.
    4. Jeffrey R. Brown & David W. Wilcox, 2009. "Discounting State and Local Pension Liabilities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 538-542, May.
    5. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    6. Robert Novy‐Marx & Joshua Rauh, 2011. "Public Pension Promises: How Big Are They and What Are They Worth?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(4), pages 1211-1249, August.
    7. Robert L. Clark & Lee A. Craig & John Sabelhaus, 2011. "State and Local Retirement Plans in the United States," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13685.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christian Dippel, 2019. "Political Parties Do Matter in U.S. Cities ... For Their Unfunded Pensions," NBER Working Papers 25601, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Christian Dippel, 2022. "Political Parties Do Matter in US Cities . . . for Their Unfunded Pensions," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 33-54, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dashle Kelley, 2014. "The political economy of unfunded public pension liabilities," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(1), pages 21-38, January.
    2. Mohan, Nancy & Zhang, Ting, 2014. "An analysis of risk-taking behavior for public defined benefit pension plans," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 403-419.
    3. Christian Dippel, 2019. "Political Parties Do Matter in U.S. Cities ... For Their Unfunded Pensions," NBER Working Papers 25601, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Klaus Kaier & Christoph Müller, 2015. "New figures on unfunded public pension entitlements across Europe: concept, results and applications," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 865-895, November.
    5. Robert Novy-Marx & Joshua D. Rauh, 2012. "Fiscal Imbalances and Borrowing Costs: Evidence from State Investment Losses," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 182-213, May.
    6. Lutz, Byron & Sheiner, Louise, 2014. "The fiscal stress arising from state and local retiree health obligations," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 130-146.
    7. Godbout, Luc & Trudel, Yves & St-Cerny, Suzie, 2013. "Le régime de rentes du Québec : le rendement différencié selon l’année de prise de la retraite de 1968 jusqu’en 2056," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 89(2), pages 89-113, Juin.
    8. Bernardo P. Schettini & Rafael Terra, 2020. "Electoral incentives and Public Employees’ Retirement Systems in Brazilian municipalities," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 184(1), pages 79-103, July.
    9. Don H. Chamberlain & L. Murphy Smith & Randall B. Bunker, 2016. "An examination of US state pensions by total state expenditures, state budget deficit and red v. blue state," International Journal of Economics and Accounting, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 7(1), pages 27-44.
    10. Byron Lutz & Louise Sheiner, 2013. "The Fiscal Stress Arising from State and Local Retiree Health Obligations," NBER Chapters, in: State and Local Health Plans for Active and Retired Public Employees, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. John A. Dove & Courtney A. Collins & Daniel J. Smith, 2018. "The impact of public pension board of trustee composition on state bond ratings," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 51-73, February.
    12. Jeffrey Diebold & Vincent Reitano & Bruce McDonald, 2018. "Sweat The Small Stuff: Strategic Selection Of Pension Policies Used To Defer Required Contributions," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(3), pages 505-525, July.
    13. Robert Novy-Marx & Joshua D. Rauh, 2012. "The Revenue Demands of Public Employee Pension Promises," NBER Working Papers 18489, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Jeffrey R. Brown & Robert Clark & Joshua Rauh, 2011. "The Economics of State and Local Public Pensions," NBER Working Papers 16792, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Grey Gordon & Pablo Guerrón-Quintana, 2021. "Public Debt, Private Pain: Regional Borrowing, Default, and Migration," Working Paper 21-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    16. Robert K. Triest & Bo Zhao, 2013. "The role of economic, fiscal, and financial shocks in the evolution of public sector pension funding," Working Papers 13-26, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    17. Michaelides, Alexander & Papakyriakou, Panayiotis & Milidonis, Andreas, 2019. "Corporate Pension Plan Funding Levels and Pension Assumptions," CEPR Discussion Papers 13591, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Abigail Allen & Reining C. Petacchi, 2023. "Preparer Opposition and Strategic Implementation of Governmental Accounting Standards: Evidence from Public Pension Accounting Reform," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(7), pages 4259-4282, July.
    19. Anantharaman, Divya & Henderson, Darren, 2021. "Contrasting the information demands of equity- and debt-holders: Evidence from pension liabilities," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2).
    20. Mitchell, O.S. & Piggott, J., 2016. "Workplace-Linked Pensions for an Aging Demographic," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 865-904, Elsevier.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:indrel:qt8c82g4hf. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/irucbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.