Rating Downgrades and Retiree Benefits

Natalie R. Cohen

Municipal Finance Journal, 2017, vol. 38, issue 1, 73 - 77

Abstract: Since the recession, there have been several years when many public pension funds suffered significant asset declines. In addition, liabilities have grown as people live longer and legacy benefit enrichments take their toll on funding. As a result, rating agencies have increasingly taken these factors into account with a number of high profile downgrades. While state rating downgrades are most prominent, other entities that are tied to a state’s rating have also suffered. Public higher education institutions and school districts, which receive substantial state revenues, have also been downgraded. Related securities such as state leases and state enhancement programs may also suffer. Recent implementation of pension accounting changes has made pension underfunding more visible on state and local balance sheets.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/MFJ38010073 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/MFJ38010073 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:munifj:doi:10.1086/mfj38010073

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Municipal Finance Journal from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().