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Pension Plan Funding and Stock Market Efficiency

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Author Info
Francesco Franzoni
José M. Marín ()

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Abstract

The paper argues that the market signifficantly overvalues firms with severely underfunded pension plans. These companies earn lower stock returns than firms with healthier pension plans for at least five years after the first emergence of the underfunding. The low returns are not explained by risk, price momentum, earnings momentum, or accruals. Further, the evidence suggests that investors do not anticipate the impact of the pension liability on future earnings, and they are surprised when the negative implications of underfunding ultimately materialize. Finally, underfunded firms have poor operating performance, and they earn low returns, although they are value companies.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in its series Economics Working Papers with number 871.

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Date of creation: Jun 2005
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Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:871

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Web page: http://www.econ.upf.edu/

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Related research
Keywords: Pricing anomalies; DB plans; market efficiency;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing
G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies
G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Pension Funds; Other Private Financial Institutions
J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies
M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Accounting - - - Accounting

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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.:
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  3. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Harrison Hong & Terence Lim & Jeremy C. Stein, 1998. "Bad News Travels Slowly: Size, Analyst Coverage and the Profitability of Momentum Strategies," NBER Working Papers 6553, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2003. "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 642-685, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  7. Martin Feldstein & Stephanie Seligman, 1981. "Pension Funding, Share Prices, and National Saving," NBER Working Papers 0509, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  8. Martin Feldstein & Randall Morck, 1985. "Pension Funding Decisions, Interest Rate Assumptions and Share Prices," NBER Working Papers 0938, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Chan, Louis K C & Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Lakonishok, Josef, 1996. " Momentum Strategies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(5), pages 1681-1713, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Jeremy I. Bulow & Lawrence H. Summers & 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. [Downloadable!]
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  11. Whitney K. Newey & Kenneth D. West, 1986. "A Simple, Positive Semi-Definite, Heteroskedasticity and AutocorrelationConsistent Covariance Matrix," NBER Technical Working Papers 0055, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Fama, Eugene F, 1991. " Efficient Capital Markets: II," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(5), pages 1575-617, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Banz, Rolf W & Breen, William J, 1986. " Sample-Dependent Results Using Accounting and Market Data: Some Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(4), pages 779-93, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. Josef Lakonishok & Robert W. Vishny & Andrei Shleifer, 1993. "Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation, and Risk," NBER Working Papers 4360, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
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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.)

  1. David A. Love & Paul A. Smith & David Wilcox, 2009. "Should risky firms offer risk-free DB pensions?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2009-20, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  2. Campbell, John Y. & Hilscher, Jens & Szilagyi, Jan, 2005. "In search of distress risk," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2005,27, Deutsche Bundesbank, Research Centre. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. José M. Marín & Francesco Franzoni, 2005. "Portable Alphas from Pension Mispricing," Economics Working Papers 894, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. [Downloadable!]
  4. Daniel Bergstresser & Mihir A. Desai & Joshua Rauh, 2004. "Earnings Manipulation and Managerial Investment Decisions: Evidence from Sponsored Pension Plans," NBER Working Papers 10543, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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