IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/revfin/v20y2016i2p575-629..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Corporate Post-Retirement Benefit Plans and Leverage

Author

Listed:
  • Söhnke M. Bartram

Abstract

Defined benefit pension and health care plans are important for firm leverage around the world. While consolidating off-balance sheet post-retirement plans increases effective leverage by 32%, firms reduce their level of regular debt by only 22 cents for every dollar of projected benefit obligation, yielding overall 23% higher total leverage of plan sponsors compared with similar firms without post-retirement plans. The most important driver of substitution rates between regular debt and post-retirement obligations is rule of law, followed by labor market freedom and taxes. In contrast, pension guarantee funds and priority of unfunded pension obligations are less important for substitution rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Söhnke M. Bartram, 2016. "Corporate Post-Retirement Benefit Plans and Leverage," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 20(2), pages 575-629.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:revfin:v:20:y:2016:i:2:p:575-629.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rof/rfv021
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward Whitehouse, 2005. "Taxation : The Tax Treatment of Funded Pensions," World Bank Publications - Reports 11211, The World Bank Group.
    2. Juan Yermo & Clara Severinson, 2010. "The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Defined Benefit Plans and the Need for Counter-Cyclical Funding Regulations," OECD Working Papers on Finance, Insurance and Private Pensions 3, OECD Publishing.
    3. Fiona Stewart, 2007. "Benefit Protection: Priority Creditor Rights for Pension Funds," OECD Working Papers on Insurance and Private Pensions 6, OECD Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ellul, Andrew & Pagano, Marco, 2019. "Corporate leverage and employees’ rights in bankruptcy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(3), pages 685-707.
    2. Armitage, Seth & Gallagher, Ronan, 2019. "Are pension contributions a threat to shareholder payouts?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 27-42.
    3. Ellul, Andrew & Pagano, Marco, 2017. "Corporate Leverage and Employees’ Rights in Bankruptcy," CEPR Discussion Papers 12033, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Liu, Guanchun & Liu, Yuanyuan & Zhang, Chengsi & Zhu, Yueteng, 2021. "Social insurance law and corporate financing decisions in China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 816-837.
    5. Bartram, Söhnke M., 2018. "In good times and in bad: Defined-benefit pensions and corporate financial policy," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 331-351.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Grech, Aaron George, 2015. "Pension reforms in the 1990s and during the financial crisis: More of the same?," MPRA Paper 66894, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Aaron George Grech, 2015. "The Financial Crisis and Differences in State Pension Generosity across EU Countries," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 13(02), pages 36-41, August.
    3. Iqbal Owadally, 2014. "Tail risk in pension funds: an analysis using ARCH models and bilinear processes," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 301-331, August.
    4. Salvador Barrios & Flavia Coda Moscarola & Francesco Figari & Luca Gandullia, 2020. "Size and distributional pattern of pension-related tax expenditures in European countries," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 27(5), pages 1287-1320, October.
    5. repec:dau:papers:123456789/13624 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. repec:ces:ifodic:v:13:y:2015:i:2:p:19166297 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Kok, Christoffer & Amzallag, Adrien & Kapp, Daniel, 2014. "The impact of regulating occupational pensions in Europe on investment and financial stability," Occasional Paper Series 154, European Central Bank.
    8. Joanna Rutecka-Gora & Jaroslav Vostatek & John A. Turner, 2018. "Extending pension coverage: Tax versus non-tax incentives," ACTA VSFS, University of Finance and Administration, vol. 12(2), pages 107-124.
    9. He, Eric & Jacob, Martin & Vashishtha, Rahul & Venkatachalam, Mohan, 2022. "Does differential taxation of short-term relative to long-term capital gains affect long-term investment?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1).
    10. Angela Xu, 2015. "Pension Taxation in the EU: A Concern for Mobile Pensioners?," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 13(3), pages 75-77, October.
    11. Angela Xu, 2015. "Pension Taxation in the EU: A Concern for Mobile Pensioners?," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 13(03), pages 75-77, October.
    12. Dvorak Tomas, 2012. "Timing of Retirement Plan Contributions and Investment Returns: The Case of Defined Benefit versus Defined Contribution," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-26, May.
    13. repec:ces:ifodic:v:13:y:2015:i:3:p:19173875 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Maleva, Tatyana Mikhailovna (Малева, Татьяна Михайловна) & Gorlin, Yury Mikhailovich (Горлин, Юрий Михайлович) & Nazarov, Vladimir (Назаров, Владимир) & Grishina, Elena E. (Гришина, Елена Е.) & Kirill, 2014. "Creation and Development of Corporate Retirement Systems in the Russian Federation [Создание И Развитие Корпоративных Пенсионных Систем В Российской Федерации]," Published Papers om26, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    15. Aaron George Grech, 2015. "The Financial Crisis and Differences in State Pension Generosity across EU Countries," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 13(2), pages 36-41, 08.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:revfin:v:20:y:2016:i:2:p:575-629.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eufaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.