Cost saving and the freezing of corporate pension plans

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Rauh, Joshua D.; Stefanescu, Irina; Zeldes, Stephen P.
• 署名单位: Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve System Board of Governors; Columbia University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Columbia University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104211
• 发表日期: 2020
• 关键词: pensions; Pension freezes; retirement; wages; Labor compensation; Firm value

摘要

Companies that freeze defined benefit pension plans save the equivalent of 13.5% of the long-horizon payroll of current employees. Furthermore, firms with higher prospective accruals are more likely to freeze their plans. Cost savings would not be possible in a benchmark model in which i) all workers receive compensation equal to their marginal product and ii) workers value equally all identical-cost forms of pension benefits. We find evidence consistent both with firms' reneging on implicit contracts that would have provided workers with high pension accruals later in their careers and with shifts in employee valuation of different forms of retirement benefits. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.