The Usefulness of the Wind-Up Measure of Pension Liabilities: A Labor Market Perspective
Abstract
Financial economists have long favoured the use of a wind-up measure of the firm's pension liabilities. Yet the pension liabilities of the firm also represent the pension wealth of its workers. It is reasonable to presume that workers and shareholders have a common view of the pension contract. If the wind-up measure depicts the true pension liabilities of the firm, then the wage concession granted by its workers must reflect the fact that the firm may choose to terminate the plan at any time. Data on the wage-service characteristics of the membership of a sample of final earnings plans in Canada suggest,contrary to the implications of the wind-up measure, that workers' wages do not internalize accruing pension benefits on a year-to-year basis. Instead, the data suggest that pension plans may be a vehicle through which a significant portion of the total compensation of individual employees is deferred until their later work years, and that the wind-up measure may well understate the pension liabilities of an on-going firm.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by American Finance Association in its journal Journal of Finance.
Volume (Year): 40 (1985)
Issue (Month): 3 (July)
Pages: 927-40
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Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- James E. Pesando, 1985. "The Usefulness of the Wind-Up Measure of Pension Liabilities: A LabourMarket Perspective," NBER Working Papers 1559, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Jeremy I. Bulow & Randall Morck & Lawrence H. Summers, 1987.
"How Does the Market Value Unfunded Pension Liabilities?,"
NBER Chapters,
in: Issues in Pension Economics, pages 81-110
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Jeremy I. Bulow & Randall Morck & Lawrence H. Summers, 1987. "How Does the Market Value Unfunded Pension Liabilities?," NBER Working Papers 1602, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Bulow, Jeremy I, 1982. "What Are Corporate Pension Liabilities?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 97(3), pages 435-52, August.
- Pesando, James E, 1984.
"Employee Evaluation of Pension Claims and the Impact of Indexing Initiatives,"
Economic Inquiry,
Western Economic Association International, vol. 22(1), pages 1-17, January.
- James E. Pesando, 1981. "Employee Valuation of Pension Claims and the Impact of Indexing Initiatives," NBER Working Papers 0767, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- David McCarthy, 2003. "A Lifecycle Analysis of Defined Benefit Pension Plans," Working Papers wp053, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
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