Contrasting the information demands of equity- and debt-holders: Evidence from pension liabilities

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Anantharaman, Divya; Henderson, Darren
• 署名单位: Rutgers University System; Rutgers University Newark; Rutgers University New Brunswick; Wilfrid Laurier University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING & ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0165-4101
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jacceco.2020.101366
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Valuation; relevance; state

摘要

In the setting of defined-benefit pension liabilities, we hypothesize that equity and debt investors value these liabilities differently. As expected, we find that investors' valuations of equity more closely align with a going concern perspective that emphasizes the longterm funding needs of pension plans. In contrast, as expected, we find that investors' pricing of short-term and unsecured debt more closely aligns with a settlement perspective that emphasizes pension termination costs. For both equity and debt securities, the settlement (going concern) perspective dominates for short-duration (long duration) pensions. Overall, our evidence suggests that equity and debt investors perceive complex liabilities in predictably different ways that are consistent with their differing information demands, which in turn vary with the characteristics of the obligation. (c) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).