Professor Rauh estimates that the shortage in pension funding is on average a third higher today.

FORBES: Do You Live In A Death Spiral State?

Joshua Rauh, a pension expert at the Kellogg School of Management, is skeptical.

FORBES: Nipping At the Sacred Cow: Major Cities Take On Pension Reform

That is why the government-bond yield is the appropriate measure for discounting public liabilities, as Messrs Rauh and Novy-Marx assert.

ECONOMIST: Buttonwood: A trillion here, $500 billion there | The

For analysts like Rauh, the main culprit is the governmental accounting standards board (GASB), whose discounting metrics are a point of contention for economists.

FORBES: Nipping At the Sacred Cow: Major Cities Take On Pension Reform

Sources: the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and a study of state worker pensions done in 2009 by two academics, Joshua Rauh and Rovert Novy-Marx.

FORBES: Do You Live In A Death Spiral State?

But Rauh and Norcross adamantly disagree.

FORBES: Nipping At the Sacred Cow: Major Cities Take On Pension Reform