Drew Campbell, senior editor of Institutional Investing in Infrastructure, and Clive Lipshitz, managing partner at Tradewind Interstate Advisors, discuss the Canadian and U.S. public pension systems and Lipshitz’s coauthored study, Public Pension Reform and the 49th Parallel: Lessons from Canada for the U.S., which was recently published in Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments, which is available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3646286. The interview is in two parts. Below is Part 1. Part II will publish in the December issue of i3.

Public pensions in the United States are underfunded, some by large amounts, and COVID-19 is eroding government revenue and its ability to fill pension shortfalls. Could this be a wakeup call to rethink how U.