This paper contrasts and empirically tests two different views of corporate pension policy: the traditional view that pension funds are managed without regard to either corporate financial policy or the interests of the corporation and its shareholders, and the corporate financial perspective represented by the recent theoretical work of Black (1980), Sharpe (1916),Tepper (1981), and Treynor (1971), which stresses the potential effects of a firm's financial condition on its pension funding and asset allocation decisions. We find several pieces of evidence supporting the corporate financial perspective. First, we find that there is a significant inverse relationship between firms' profitability and the discount rates they choose tor eport their pension liabilities. In view of this we adjust all reported pension liabilities to a common discount rate assumption. We then find a significant positive relationship between firm profitability and the degree ofpension funding, as is consistent with the corporate financial perspective. We also find some evidence that firms facing higher risk and lower tax liabilities are less inclined to fully fund their pension plans. On the asset allocation question, we find that the distribution of plan assets invested in bonds is bi-modal, but that it does not tend to cluster around extreme portfolio configurations to the extent predicted by the corporate financial perspective. We also find that the percentage of plan assets invested in bonds in negatively related to both total size of plan and the proportion of unfunded liabilities.The latter relationship shows up particularly among the riskiest firms and is consistent with the corporate financial perspective on pension decisions.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
1315.
Length: Date of creation: Jul 1986 Date of revision: Publication status: published relationship to a non-chapter. This should not happen. Please contact NBER. Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1315
Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
References listed on IDEAS Please 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.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please 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.)