Cities now commonly engage with financial actors, tools, and markets to manage their budgets and associated activities. The growing significance of finance within urban governance is connected by some scholars to the latter’s increasingly speculative character. One area of urban governance where financial tools are now commonly used for speculative ends are public pensions. Across the United States, many state and local governments face large unfunded pension liabilities. In some cases, this has led them to issue pension obligation bonds to reduce their unfunded liabilities. This paper examines the extent of recent pension obligation bond issuance and develops a comparative case study of three Massachusetts municipalities. The research results show that the speculative content of pension obligation bonds varies, even across three Massachusetts municipalities. By using pension obligation bonds, all three case study cities have exposed themselves to different levels of financial risk and have given themselves a long-term governance challenge by installing a speculative financial tool within their budgeting.

中文翻译：

---

是否值得押注养老金？三个城市使用养老金义务债券的案例研究

现在，城市通常与金融参与者、工具和市场合作来管理其预算和相关活动。一些学者将金融在城市治理中日益增长的重要性与城市治理日益投机的特征联系起来。公共养老金是城市治理领域目前常被用于投机目的的金融工具之一。在美国各地，许多州和地方政府都面临着巨额无资金准备的养老金负债。在某些情况下，这导致他们发行养老金义务债券以减少无资金准备的负债。本文探讨了最近养老金义务债券发行的程度，并对马萨诸塞州的三个城市进行了比较案例研究。研究结果表明，即使在马萨诸塞州的三个城市中，养老金义务债券的投机内容也各不相同。通过使用养老金义务债券，所有三个案例研究城市都面临着不同程度的金融风险，并在预算中安装了投机性金融工具，从而给自己带来了长期的治理挑战。