We develop a simple model of pension financing to study the effects of pension risk on shareholder value. In the model, firms minimize costs, total compensation must clear the labor market, and a government pension insurer guarantees a portion of promised benefits. We find that in the absence of...

Even risky pension sponsors could offer essentially riskless pension promises by contributing a sufficient level of resources to their pension trust funds and by investing those resources in fixed-income securities designed to deliver their payoffs just as pension obligations are coming due....

A number of industries underwent large and permanent reductions in employment growth at the beginning of this decade, a process we label as restructuring. We describe how restructuring occurred and what its consequences were for the economy. In particular, we find that restructuring stemmed...

We estimate the employment effects of changes in national minimum wages using a pooled cross-section time-series data set comprising 17 OECD countries for the period 1975-2000, focusing on the impact of cross-country differences in minimum wage systems and in other labor market institutions and...

This paper describes a feedback effect between real and financial development. The paper presents a new variable, which we call the cost of financial intermediation, through which the feedback between finance and growth operates. The theoretical part of the paper describes how specialization of...

This paper estimates a structural demand model for commercial bank deposit services. Following the discrete choice literature, consumer decisions are based on prices and bank characteristics. The results, based on the U.S. for 1993-1999, indicate that, with respect to prices, consumers respond...