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 inac

Olivia S. Mitchell is the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor of Insurance and Risk Management, the Executive Director of the Pension Research Council, and the Director of the Boettner Center on Pensions and Retirement Research at the Wharton School. Concurrently Dr. Mitchell is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Co-Investigator for the AHEAD/Health and Retirement Studies at the University of Michigan. Dr. Mitchell's main areas of research and teaching are private and public insurance, risk management, public finance and labor markets, and compensation and pensions, with a US and an international focus. She received the B.A. in Economics from Harvard University and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gary Anderson is a consultant on public pension issues; previously he served as Executive Director of the Texas Municipal Retirement system which covers municipal employees and retirees for many Texas cities. He is also an Advisory Board member of Wharton's Pension Research Council, and he served with the National Association of State Retirement Administrators and the Government Finance Officers Association. He received the BA in Political Science from Texas A&M University, and the MA in Public Management from the University of Houston-Clear Lake City.

1. The Future of Public Employee Retirement Systems, Olivia S. Mitchell
Part I: Costs and Benefits of Public Employee Retirement Systems
2. Estimating State and Local Government Pension and Retiree Health Care Liabilities, Stephen T. McElhaney
3. The Case for Marking Public Plan Liabilities to Market, Jeremy Gold and Gordon Latter
4. Between Scylla and Charybdis: Improving the Cost Effectiveness of Public Pension Retirement Plans, M. Barton Waring
5. Public Pensions and State and Local Budgets: Can Contribution Rate Cyclicality Be Better Managed?, Parry Young
6. Benefit Cost Comparisons Between State and Local Governments and Private Industry Employers, Ken McDonnell
7. Administrative Costs of State Defined Benefit and Defined Contribution, Edwin C. Hustead
8. Thinking About Funding Federal Retirement Plans, Toni Hustead
Part II: Implementing Public Retirement System Reform
9. Reforming the German Civil Servant Pension Plan, Raimond Maurer, Olivia S. Mitchell, and Ralph Rogalla
10. The Outlook for Canada's Public Sector Employee Pensions, Silvana Pozzebon
11. Unifying Pension Schemes in Japan: Toward a Single Scheme for Both Civil Servants and Private Employees, Junichi Sakamoto
12. Redefining Traditional Plans: Variations and Developments in Public Employee Retirement Plan Design, Keith Brainard
13. Defined Contribution Pension Plans in the Public Sector: A Benchmark Analysis, Roderick B. Crane, Michael Heller, and Paul J. Yakoboski
Part III: The Political Economy of Public Pensions
14. The Evolution of Public Sector Pension Plans in the United States, Robert L. Clark, Lee A. Craig, and Neveen Ahmed
15. Pension Fund Activism: The Double-Edged Sword, Brad M. Barber
16. The New Intersection on the Road to Retirement: Public Pensions, Economics, Perceptions, Politics, and Interest Groups, Beth Almeida, Kelly Kenneally, and David Madland