[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/0927.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economic Implications of ERISA

Author

Listed:
  • Jeremy I. Bulow
  • Myron S. Scholes
  • Peter Menell
Abstract
If the intent of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, ERISA, was to assure that beneficiaries of insolvent pension plans receive adequate pension benefits, sharp increases in nominal rates of interest have blunted that purpose. Without an increase in these rates, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, PBGC, the insurance agency established to guarantee benefits, faced large liabilities on the terminations of pension plans. We examine the economics of pension funds and the funding of pension funds before and after the enactment of ERISA. The Act changed the economics of pension funds. The PBGC, the employer, and the employees have interests in the assets of the pension plan. The PBGC can tax corporations to pay off liabilities and to fund guaranteed benefits; employers can terminate pension plans or overfund them; employees can ask for more benefits or claim the assets in the fund. Although the PBGC insures benefits, the insurance agent forbears, not acting quickly to protect its own interests. To prevent potential huge increases in its liabilities, the PBGC could require that employers hedge the guaranteed benefits, and fund their increases in promised benefits. Given its policies, these requirements could protect the PBGC.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremy I. Bulow & Myron S. Scholes & Peter Menell, 1982. "Economic Implications of ERISA," NBER Working Papers 0927, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0927
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w0927.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeremy I. Bulow, 1979. "Analysis of Pension Funding Under Erisa," NBER Working Papers 0402, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Irwin Tepper, 1981. "Taxation and Corporate Pension Policy," NBER Working Papers 0661, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Martin Feldstein & Lawrence Summers, 1983. "Inflation and the Taxation of Capital Income in the Corporate Sector," NBER Chapters, in: Inflation, Tax Rules, and Capital Formation, pages 116-152, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Feldstein, Martin & Seligman, Stephanie, 1981. "Pension Funding, Share Prices, and National Savings," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 36(4), pages 801-824, September.
    5. Burt S. Barnow & Ronald G. Ehrenberg, 1979. "The Costs of Defined Benefit Pension Plans and Firm Adjustments," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(4), pages 523-540.
    6. Arnott, Richard J. & Gersovitz, Mark, 1980. "Corporate financial structure and the funding of private pension plans," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 231-247, April.
    7. Treynor, Jack L, 1977. "The Principles of Corporate Pension Finance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 627-638, May.
    8. Tepper, Irwin & Affleck, A R P, 1974. "Pension Plan Liabilities and Corporate Financial Strategies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(5), pages 1549-1564, December.
    9. Jeremy I. Bulow, 1982. "What are Corporate Pension Liabilities?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 97(3), pages 435-452.
    10. Sharpe, William F., 1976. "Corporate pension funding policy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 183-193, June.
    11. Miller, Merton H, 1977. "Debt and Taxes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 261-275, May.
    12. Tepper, Irwin, 1981. "Taxation and Corporate Pension Policy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 36(1), pages 1-13, March.
    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. Alan Marcus, 1987. "Corporate Pension Policy and the Value of PBGC Insurance," NBER Chapters, in: Issues in Pension Economics, pages 49-80, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Jeremy I. Bulow & Myron S. Scholes, 1983. "Who Owns the Assets in a Defined-Benefit Pension Plan?," NBER Chapters, in: Financial Aspects of the United States Pension System, pages 17-36, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Clark, Robert L. & Gohmann, Stephan F. & McDermed, Ann A., 1988. "Declining Use Of Defined Benefit Pension Plans: Is Federal Regulation The Reason?," Department of Economics and Business - Archive 259433, North Carolina State University, Department of Economics.

    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. Jeremy I. Bulow & Myron S. Scholes, 1983. "Who Owns the Assets in a Defined-Benefit Pension Plan?," NBER Chapters, in: Financial Aspects of the United States Pension System, pages 17-36, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Webb, David C., 2004. "Sponsoring company finance and investment and defined benefit pension scheme deficits," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24699, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Móricz, Dániel, 2004. "Vállalati szolgáltatási nyugdíjprogramok optimális befektetési politikája és fedezettségi szintje az Egyesült Államokban [Optimal investment and funding policy of US defined-benefit pension plans]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(12), pages 1113-1131.
    4. Pesando, James E, 1984. "Employee Evaluation of Pension Claims and the Impact of Indexing Initiatives," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 22(1), pages 1-17, January.
    5. Zvi Bodie & Jay O. Light & Randall Morck, 1987. "Funding and Asset Allocation in Corporate Pension Plans: An Empirical Investigation," NBER Chapters, in: Issues in Pension Economics, pages 15-48, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Jeremy I. Bulow, 1981. "Tax Aspects of Corporate Pension Funding Policy," NBER Working Papers 0724, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Cooper, Russell W. & Ross, Thomas W., 2001. "Pensions: theories of underfunding," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(6), pages 667-689, December.
    8. Michael J. Alderson & Neil L. Seitz, 2013. "Pension Policy and the Value of Corporate-Level Investment," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 42(2), pages 413-440, June.
    9. Alan Marcus, 1987. "Corporate Pension Policy and the Value of PBGC Insurance," NBER Chapters, in: Issues in Pension Economics, pages 49-80, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Benjamin M. Friedman, 1983. "Pension Funding, Pension Asset Allocation, and Corporate Finance: Evidence from Individual Company Data," NBER Chapters, in: Financial Aspects of the United States Pension System, pages 107-152, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Benjamin M. Friedman, 1982. "Pension Funding, Pension Asset Allocation, and Corporate Finance: Evidence From Individual Company Data," NBER Working Papers 0957, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Love, David A. & Smith, Paul A. & Wilcox, David W., 2011. "The effect of regulation on optimal corporate pension risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(1), pages 18-35, July.
    13. David A. Love & Paul A. Smith & David W. Wilcox, 2009. "Should risky firms offer risk-free DB pensions?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2009-20, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    14. Rauh, Joshua D. & Stefanescu, Irina & Zeldes, Stephen P., 2020. "Cost saving and the freezing of corporate pension plans," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    15. Love, David & Smith, Paul A. & Wilcox, David, 2007. "Why Do Firms Offer Risky Defined–Benefit Pension Plans?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 60(3), pages 507-519, September.
    16. Joshua D. Rauh & Irina Stefanescu & Stephen P. Zeldes, 2020. "Cost Saving and the Freezing of Corporate Pension Plans," NBER Working Papers 27251, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Li, C. Wei & Yao, Tong & Ying, Jie, 2024. "Investment policies and risk sharing by corporate pensions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    18. Zvi Bodie, 1988. "Pension Fund Investment Policy," NBER Working Papers 2752, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Coronado, Julia & Mitchell, Olivia S. & Sharpe, Steven A. & Blake Nesbitt, S., 2008. "Footnotes aren't enough: the impact of pension accounting on stock values," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(3), pages 257-276, November.
    20. Horiba, Yutaka & Yoshida, Kazuo, 2002. "Determinants of Japanese corporate pension coverage," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 54(5), pages 537-555.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nbr:nberwo:0927. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.