IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ibf/ijbfre/v6y2012i1p1-14.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Information Content Of Changes In Pension Plan Funding Status And Long-Term Debt

Author

Listed:
  • Karen C. Castro-González

Abstract

This study investigates whether investors efficiently incorporate changes in defined benefit pension plan information in stock prices. The sample is comprised of public US companies with available data from 1980 to 2005. Fama and French three factor (1993) and four factor models results reveal that the market inefficiently incorporates changes in defined benefit pension plan information. The results suggest that investors are not paying enough attention to the implications of the changes in funding status for future earnings and cash flows. Investors’ reactions to changes in defined benefit pension plan information were compared to reactions to changes in long-term debt account ratios. The results reveal that the market is also inefficient incorporating changes in long-term debt information. Hedge-portfolio tests are performed to verify if there is an opportunity to outperform the market by identifying market inefficiencies. The hedge-portfolio results support the notion that the market overprices firms that have the most negative changes in funding ratio and increases in long-term debt ratio.

Suggested Citation

  • Karen C. Castro-González, 2012. "Information Content Of Changes In Pension Plan Funding Status And Long-Term Debt," The International Journal of Business and Finance Research, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 6(1), pages 1-14.
    • Handle: RePEc:ibf:ijbfre:v:6:y:2012:i:1:p:1-14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.theibfr2.com/RePEc/ibf/ijbfre/ijbfr-v6n1-2012/IJBFR-V6N1-2012-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    2. Coronado, Julia & Mitchell, Olivia S. & Sharpe, Steven A. & Blake Nesbitt, S., 2008. "Footnotes aren't enough: the impact of pension accounting on stock values," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(3), pages 257-276, November.
    3. Stober, Tl, 1986. "The Incremental Information-Content Of Financial Statement Disclosures - The Case Of Lifo Inventory Liquidations," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24, pages 138-160.
    4. Bradley, Michael & Jarrell, Gregg A & Kim, E Han, 1984. "On the Existence of an Optimal Capital Structure: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 857-878, July.
    5. Hirshleifer, David & Kewei Hou & Teoh, Siew Hong & Yinglei Zhang, 2004. "Do investors overvalue firms with bloated balance sheets?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 297-331, December.
    6. repec:bla:jfinan:v:43:y:1988:i:2:p:507-28 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Konan Chan & Louis K. C. Chan & Narasimhan Jegadeesh & Josef Lakonishok, 2006. "Earnings Quality and Stock Returns," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(3), pages 1041-1082, May.
    8. 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.
    9. repec:bla:jfinan:v:44:y:1989:i:2:p:451-68 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Best, Ronald W, 1997. "The Role of Default Risk in Determining the Market Reaction to Debt Announcements," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 32(1), pages 87-105, February.
    11. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Titman, Sheridan, 1993. "Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 65-91, March.
    12. Asthana, Sharad, 2008. "Earnings management, expected returns on pension assets, and resource allocation decisions," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(2), pages 199-220, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Gikas Hardouvelis & George Papanastasopoulos & Dimitrios D. Thomakos & Tao Wang, 2007. "Accruals, Net Stock Issues and Value-Glamour Anomalies: New Evidence on their Relation," Working Paper series 47_07, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    2. David Hirshleifer & Kewei Hou & Siew Hong Teoh, 2012. "The Accrual Anomaly: Risk or Mispricing?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(2), pages 320-335, February.
    3. Richardson, Scott & Tuna, Irem & Wysocki, Peter, 2010. "Accounting anomalies and fundamental analysis: A review of recent research advances," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 410-454, December.
    4. Eero Pätäri & Timo Leivo, 2017. "A Closer Look At Value Premium: Literature Review And Synthesis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 79-168, February.
    5. Turan G. Bali & Robert F. Engle & Yi Tang, 2017. "Dynamic Conditional Beta Is Alive and Well in the Cross Section of Daily Stock Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3760-3779, November.
    6. Stefan Nagel, 2013. "Empirical Cross-Sectional Asset Pricing," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 167-199, November.
    7. Bartram, Söhnke M. & Grinblatt, Mark, 2018. "Agnostic fundamental analysis works," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(1), pages 125-147.
    8. Chou, Pin-Huang & Ko, Kuan-Cheng & Yang, Nien-Tzu, 2019. "Asset growth, style investing, and momentum," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 108-124.
    9. Choi, Jaewon & Richardson, Matthew, 2016. "The volatility of a firm's assets and the leverage effect," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 254-277.
    10. Juhani T. Linnainmaa & Michael R. Roberts, 2016. "The History of the Cross Section of Stock Returns," NBER Working Papers 22894, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Andreou, Christoforos K. & Lambertides, Neophytos & Panayides, Photis M., 2021. "Distress risk anomaly and misvaluation," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(5).
    12. Xin Chen & Wei He & Libin Tao & Jianfeng Yu, 2023. "Attention and Underreaction-Related Anomalies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(1), pages 636-659, January.
    13. Leonid Kogan & Mary Tian, 2012. "Firm characteristics and empirical factor models: a data-mining experiment," International Finance Discussion Papers 1070, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    14. Lin, Qi, 2017. "Noisy prices and the Fama–French five-factor asset pricing model in China," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 141-163.
    15. Bartram, Söhnke M. & Grinblatt, Mark, 2021. "Global market inefficiencies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 234-259.
    16. Andrew Y. Chen & Tom Zimmermann, 2022. "Open Source Cross-Sectional Asset Pricing," Critical Finance Review, now publishers, vol. 11(2), pages 207-264, May.
    17. Chan, Konan & Lin, Yueh-Hsiang & Wang, Yanzhi, 2017. "Limits-to-arbitrage, investment frictions, and innovation anomalies," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 1-14.
    18. Guohua Jiang & Donglin Li & Gang Li, 2012. "Capital investment and momentum strategies," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 165-188, August.
    19. Doron Avramov & Tarun Chordia & Gergana Jostova & Alexander Philipov, 2022. "The Distress Anomaly is Deeper than You Think: Evidence from Stocks and Bonds [The prediction of corporate bankruptcy: a discriminant analysis]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(2), pages 355-405.
    20. Doron Avramov & Guy Kaplanski & Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 2022. "Postfundamentals Price Drift in Capital Markets: A Regression Regularization Perspective," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(10), pages 7658-7681, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    long-term debt; defined benefits pension plan; stock prices; four factor model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions

    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:ibf:ijbfre:v:6:y:2012:i:1:p:1-14. 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: Mercedes Jalbert (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.