Cost/Benefit Tradeoffs Relating To Reductions In Postretirement Health Care Benefits In The SFAS 106 Environment

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; tab-stops: -.5in .5in; mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Batang;">We investigate what factors help explain postretirement health care benefit (PRB) reductions around the adoption of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard 106 (SFAS 106). We find that firms with more motivation to make benefit cuts because of larger PRB-related obligations were more likely to decrease benefits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Our primary contribution comes from examining the <strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">cost/benefit</strong> <strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">tradeoffs</strong> of making these reductions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For example, we find a trade-off between reductions in PRB and increases in pension obligations, consistent with firms offering higher alternative forms of compensation to make up for the loss in PRB. In addition, firms with greater unionization among employees are somewhat less likely to reduce benefits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Finally, we document that firms involved in more extensive efforts to reduce capacity and cut costs through firm restructurings are more likely to reduce benefits.</span></span></span></p>

Do the Poor Benefit from Public Spending? A Look at the Evidence

This paper shows that public spending on basic services, to wit, primary and secondary education and basic health care, benefit the poor; while the non-poor are the principal beneficiaries of tertiary and education subsidies and hospital spending. The evidence also shows that expenditures on infrastructure spending tend to benefit the nonpoor disproportionately more than the poor.