We focus our analysis on whether states engage in actions to mask the size of pension funding gaps and thus reduce the size
of pension contributions during periods of fiscal stress and whether there are economic outcomes associated with those actions.
Pension obligations are among the largest obligations states face, and taking accounting actions to improve the funded status of
these obligations may reduce a state's expenditures on pensions and provide states with the flexibility to avoid raising taxes or
cutting entitlement programs during economic downturns. However, using accounting discretion to reduce funding gaps is
likely to result in an understated cost of labor being reflected in the state's accounting system. This is particularly important as
the information that is generated by the states’ accounting system serves as inputs into states' budgets, appropriations, and
other control mechanisms. When an accounting system understates the costs associated with pension benefits, states may
invest more in labor, as the “true-cost” of each worker is not reflected in the decision-maker's information set.
We argue that there are several elements of GASB pension reporting rules that allow states to understate their pension
funding gaps, and thus lower their annual pension related expenditures.4 In particular, governmental entities discount
future pension benefits using the expected investment return on assets held in the pension trust and have the discretion to
amortize investment gains and losses over future reporting periods. Jointly, these rules provide financial reporting
discretion to politicians so they can reduce funding gaps and required contributions to the pension fund, which may
alleviate budgetary stress and the need to increase taxes and cut spending. Thus, the main hypotheses we investigate in the
paper are whether states understate their pension funding gaps in periods of fiscal stress, whether understated pension
funding gaps are associated with states’ decisions to engage in mid-year spending cuts and tax increases, and whether the
extent to which states understate their pension funding gaps is associated with future employment costs.
To provide evidence on these hypotheses, we collect data on the state's pension obligations from two sources: the Public
Pension Coordinating Council's PENDAT Survey of State and Local Government Employee Retirement Systems and the
Boston College Center for Retirement Research for fiscal years from 1990–2009. We supplement this data by hand collecting
information for missing plan-years directly from the state's Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) and pension
plan valuation reports. After accounting for missing data, we have 984 state years with pension data