The Great Pension Grab: Comments on Richard Ippolito, Bankruptcy and Workers: Risks, Compensation and Pension Contracts

Richard Ippolito models and attempts to assign a value to assets that employees have at risk in their employer firms. Second, he documents and proposes to explain the significant changes that we have seen in the last two decades in the terms on which corporations provide pension benefits to their employees, when they provide them at all. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the Article documents some of the changes in the degree to which employees today are actually bearing substantial risk in connection with the business enterprises that they work for than they have historically. This commentary begins with a discussion of Ippolito’s explanation of the changes in the pension plans and then makes comments on the significance of the fact that employees have become substantial risk bearers in corporations.