It is unlikely that increases in federal employee pension contributions or reductions in pension benefits for future federal retirees would lower total compensation below federal workers’ reservation wage, which represents the minimum pay at which a worker will accept a particular type of job.

Many public workers are overpaid relative to their private sector counterparts, especially in large, unionized states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and California. This may sound like a controversial claim, but it shouldn't. A consensus is building about the need for reform.

At this AEI conference, AEI resident scholar Andrew G. Biggs will discuss research on Social Security's incentives to delay retirement, while Estelle James, a pension consultant and former World Bank economist, will present findings on how Chile's 1980 pension reform affected labor force participation by seniors.

Prohibiting their bond trading will seriously weaken banks and the markets that banks supply with liquidity.

Nationwide, as governors and legislators seek to rein in labor costs, public-employee unions are protesting that their members are actually underpaid. But a growing body of evidence strongly suggests that their protests have no basis in fact.

Nebraska's CB plans are innovative and could be a model for other states to follow as they try and bring their budgets and pensions under control. Yet there are other, more transparent and taxpayer-friendly ways Nebraska could construct the pension system.

The need for pension reform is obvious and immediate: Lots of companies have defaulted on their defined-benefit pension plans, and for many others, the clock is ticking on woefully underfunded liabilities.