IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boe/boeewp/276.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Corporate expenditures and pension contributions: evidence from UK company accounts

Author

Listed:
  • Philip Bunn
  • Kamakshya Trivedi

Abstract

This paper examines how corporate behaviour is related to financial pressure, where the financial pressure is on account of pension contributions to the company pension scheme. Using a large panel of quoted non-financial UK firms from 1983-2002, we estimate generalised methods of moments models for dividends and investment. Our results suggest that dividends are reduced in response to higher pension contributions. There is only weak evidence of any impact on investment. Companies that seek to tackle underfunding of defined benefit pension schemes by raising their contributions could pay lower dividends than they would have otherwise.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip Bunn & Kamakshya Trivedi, 2005. "Corporate expenditures and pension contributions: evidence from UK company accounts," Bank of England working papers 276, Bank of England.
    • Handle: RePEc:boe:boeewp:276
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/workingpapers/2005/WP276.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Myers, Stewart C. & Majluf, Nicholas S., 1984. "Corporate financing and investment decisions when firms have information that investors do not have," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 187-221, June.
    2. Stephen Bond & Anke Hoeffler & Jonathan Temple, 2001. "GMM Estimation of Empirical Growth Models," Economics Papers 2001-W21, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    3. Andrew Benito & Garry Young, 2007. "Financial Pressure and Balance Sheet Adjustment by Firms," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 69(5), pages 581-602, October.
    4. Oliver Hart, 2001. "Financial Contracting," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1079-1100, December.
    5. Bond, Stephen R & Chennells, Lucy & Devereux, Michael P, 1996. "Taxes and Company Dividends: A Microeconometric Investigation Exploiting Cross-Section Variation in Taxes," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(435), pages 320-333, March.
    6. Stewart C. Myers & Nicholas S. Majluf, 1984. "Corporate Financing and Investment Decisions When Firms Have InformationThat Investors Do Not Have," NBER Working Papers 1396, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Nickell, Stephen & Nicolitsas, Daphne, 1999. "How does financial pressure affect firms?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(8), pages 1435-1456, August.
    8. Vlieghe, Gertjan & Stephen Bond & Alexander Klemm & Rain Newton-Smith & Murtaza Syed, 2003. "The roles of expected profitability, Tobin's Q and cash flow in econometric models of company investment," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 212, Royal Economic Society.
    9. Andrew Benito & Garry Young, 2003. "Hard Times or Great Expectations? Dividend Omissions and Dividend Cuts by UK Firms," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(5), pages 531-555, December.
    10. Auerbach, Alan J., 2002. "Taxation and corporate financial policy," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 19, pages 1251-1292, Elsevier.
    11. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    12. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August.
    13. Stewart C. Myers, 2001. "Capital Structure," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 81-102, Spring.
    14. Bowsher, Clive G., 2002. "On testing overidentifying restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 211-220, October.
    15. Auerbach, Alan J. & Hassett, Kevin A., 2003. "On the marginal source of investment funds," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 205-232, January.
    16. Andrew Benito, 2005. "Financial Pressure, Monetary Policy Effects and Inventories: Firm-level Evidence from a Market-based and a Bank-based Financial System," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 72(286), pages 201-224, May.
    17. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen & Devereux, Michael & Schiantarelli, Fabio, 1992. "Investment and Tobin's Q: Evidence from company panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1-2), pages 233-257.
    18. Stephen Bond & Anke Hoeffler, 2001. "GMM Estimation of Empirical Growth Models," Economics Series Working Papers 2001-W21, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    19. Alan J. Auerbach, 1979. "Wealth Maximization and the Cost of Capital," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(3), pages 433-446.
    20. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    21. Cocco, Joâo F. & Volpin, Paolo, 2005. "The Corporate Governance of Defined-Benefit Pension Plans: Evidence from the United Kingdom," CEPR Discussion Papers 4932, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    22. E. Philip Davis, 2000. "Regulation of private pensions : a case study of the UK," Revue d'Économie Financière, Programme National Persée, vol. 60(5), pages 175-192.
    23. Ms. Enrica Detragiache, 2003. "Company Pension Plans, Stock Market Returns, and Labor Demand," IMF Working Papers 2003/222, International Monetary Fund.
    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. Bunn, Philip & Smietanka, Pawel & Mizen, Paul, 2018. "Growing pension deficits and the expenditure decisions of UK companies," Bank of England working papers 714, Bank of England.
    2. Josiah, J. & Gough, O. & Haslam, J. & Shah, N., 2014. "Corporate reporting implication in migrating from defined benefit to defined contribution pension schemes: A focus on the UK," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 18-37.
    3. Parker, Miles, 2006. "Diverging Trends in Aggregate and Firm–Level Volatility in the UK," Discussion Papers 16, Monetary Policy Committee Unit, Bank of England.
    4. Armitage, Seth & Gallagher, Ronan, 2019. "Are pension contributions a threat to shareholder payouts?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 27-42.
    5. Goto, Shingo & Yanase, Noriyoshi, 2021. "Pension return assumptions and shareholder-employee risk-shifting," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).

    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. Andrew Benito & Garry Young, 2007. "Financial Pressure and Balance Sheet Adjustment by Firms," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 69(5), pages 581-602, October.
    2. Philip Bunn & Garry Young, 2004. "Corporate capital structure in the United Kingdom: determinants and adjustment," Bank of England working papers 226, Bank of England.
    3. Carpenter, Robert E. & Guariglia, Alessandra, 2008. "Cash flow, investment, and investment opportunities: New tests using UK panel data," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(9), pages 1894-1906, September.
    4. Andrew Benito, 2003. "The incidence and persistence of dividend omissions by Spanish firms," Working Papers 0303, Banco de España.
    5. Andrew Benito, 2003. "The capital structure decisions of firms: is there a pecking order?," Working Papers 0310, Banco de España.
    6. Andrew Benito & Garry Young, 2003. "Hard Times or Great Expectations? Dividend Omissions and Dividend Cuts by UK Firms," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(5), pages 531-555, December.
    7. Andrew Benito & Ignacio Hernando, 2007. "Firm Behaviour And Financial Pressure: Evidence From Spanish Panel Data," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(4), pages 283-311, October.
    8. Mykhayliv, Dariya & Zauner, Klaus G., 2013. "Investment behavior and ownership structures in Ukraine: Soft budget constraints, government ownership and private benefits of control," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 265-278.
    9. Andrew Benito & Ignacio Hernando, 2002. "Extricate: Financial Pressure and Firm Behaviour in Spain," Working Papers 0227, Banco de España.
    10. Andrew Benito & John Whitley, 2003. "Implicit interest rates and corporate balance sheets: an analysis using aggregate and disaggregated UK data," Bank of England working papers 193, Bank of England.
    11. Mário Santos & António Moreira & Elisabete Vieira, 2014. "Ownership concentration, contestability, family firms, and capital structure," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 18(4), pages 1063-1107, November.
    12. Elif Acar & Gamze Vural & Emin Hüseyin Çetenak, 2020. "Evidence for Financial Hierarchy Theory in Capital Structure Decisions: Data from BIST Companies," Bogazici Journal, Review of Social, Economic and Administrative Studies, Bogazici University, Department of Economics, vol. 34(1), pages 29-50.
    13. Chen, Minjia & Guariglia, Alessandra, 2013. "Internal financial constraints and firm productivity in China: Do liquidity and export behavior make a difference?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 1123-1140.
    14. Peter Gibbard & Ibrahim Stevens, 2011. "Corporate debt and financial balance sheet adjustment: a comparison of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 95-118, February.
    15. Spaliara, Marina-Eliza, 2009. "Do financial factors affect the capital-labour ratio? Evidence from UK firm-level data," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1932-1947, October.
    16. R. Glenn Hubbard, 1998. "Capital-Market Imperfections and Investment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 193-225, March.
    17. İbrahim Yarba & Z. Nuray Güner, 2020. "Leverage dynamics: Do financial development and government leverage matter? Evidence from a major developing economy," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(5), pages 2473-2507, November.
    18. Renneboog, L.D.R. & Trojanowski, G., 2005. "Control Structures and Payout Policy," Other publications TiSEM a82281ef-f247-479f-a0e3-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    19. Ferrando, Annalisa & Martinez-Carrascal, Carmen & Coluzzi, Chiara, 2009. "Financing obstacles and growth: an analysis for euro area non-financial corporations," Working Paper Series 997, European Central Bank.
    20. Trojanowski, G., 2004. "Ownership structure as a mechanism of corporate governance," Other publications TiSEM 5dbc874d-d1d0-44a5-9717-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:boe:boeewp:276. 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: Digital Media Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/boegvuk.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.