Allocating Shareholder Capital to Pension Plans

This article discusses the corporate challenge of providing retirement income to employees while limiting the costs and risks of pension plans to the companies themselves by addressing five main questions:

• ? What are the major issues and challenges surrounding pensions? Although the pension shortfalls have been the focus of attention, the author argues that the more serious concern is the risk stemming from the mismatch between pension assets and pension liabilities— that is, the funding of debt‐like liabilities with equity‐heavy asset portfolios.
• ? To what extent do the equity market and equity prices reflect the shortfall in value and the mismatch in risk? While the author describes some evidence of the market's ability to capture pension risk, analysts' P/E multiples and management's assessments of cost of capital may still be distorted by failure to take full account of the risks associated with pension assets.
• ? How should management analyze and formulate strategic solutions? Without offering specific solutions, the author presents a framework for analyzing the problem from a strategic perspective that can be used in formulating a company's pension policy. In particular, the article recommends that companies take an integrated perspective that views pension assets and liabilities as parts of the corporate balance sheet, and the pension asset allocation decision as a critical aspect of a corporate‐wide enterprise risk management program.
• ? If a company chooses to make a major change in its pension policy, such as a partial or complete immunization accomplished by substituting bonds for stocks, how would you communicate the new policy to the rating agencies and investors?
• ? What are the major issues to be thinking about when contemplating a change from a DB plan to a defined contribution, or DC, plan? The author argues that DC plans without some corporate oversight or responsibility for results are not a long‐term solution.

     

Getting Feedback on Defined Contribution Pension Plans

With the growth of private and public defined contribution (DC) pension plans around the world, market rates of return should increasingly play a large role in the retirement patterns of individuals. The reverse could, however, also be true—i.e., a country's population demographics could influence the financial markets. In this article, we model the potential impact of aggregate retirement patterns on macroeconomic variables with the goal of further understanding the implications of a traditional DC pension becoming the predominant source of retirement income for an entire society. We find that the economic-system feedback dampens fluctuations in the size of the working population.     

The Influence of Culture on Pension Plans

It is widely recognized that culture is a dimension affecting a vast array of management and social choices. However, we know little about the effect of culture on choices that combine both business and social issues in an accounting setting. Employee benefit choices by managers reflect both the business choices of a firm in the selection and retention of employees and social choices in the type and extent of benefits provided to employees. The objective of this study is to investigate the extent to which culture affects employee benefits as manifested in pension plans. In a comparison of plans that differ according to the home country of the parent firm and are offered in the regulated environment of the United States, results indicate an effect of culture on pension plan choices. In particular, culture plays a role in determining the funding level percentage of the plan, employer contributions receivable, and revenues received or receivable from employers.     

The Shift to Defined Contribution Pension Plans

Abstract

There has been a strong shift away from defined benefit (DB) pension plans toward defined contribution (DC) pension plans in the United States over the last 20 years. A variety of reasons for this shift have been proposed. In another paper in this issue, Krzysztof Ostaszewski presents a new hypothesis to explain the shift to DC plans in the United States. He argues that the decline in importance of DB plans is due to a shift in the way relative returns to macroeconomic factors of production, that is, capital and labor, are being rewarded in the national economy.

This paper attempts to test the Ostaszewski hypothesis using Canadian data. In Canada there has been only a slight decrease in DB plan coverage. It is shown that the Ostaszewski theory does not fit the Canadian experience well. Instead, it is argued that pension regulation and tax legislation play a crucial role in pension design and reform. It is also argued that the difference in pension regulation and taxation in Canada versus the United States has directly influenced plan sponsors in considering their pension objectives, costs, and risks. Differences in the proportion of the workforce that is unionized may also be important. The paper concludes that pension regulation and taxation are more important variables than are macroeconomic reward systems in the use of DB versus DC pension plans.     

企业年金与我国资本市场发展的几点思考

发达国家已经形成了企业年金与资本市场的良性互动。企业年金在我国的建立和发展,也将对我国的资本市场产生深远的影响。我国资本市场的发育不成熟制约着企业年金的发展规模,应加强对资本市场的完善,充分发挥其正面积极作用,实现企业年金与资本市场的有效结合和共同发展。     

Japanese Corporate Pension Plans and the Impact on Stock Prices

This study focuses on the stock market impact of Japanese corporate decisions to adopt pension plans. Implementing corporate pension plans in Japan is complicated because they are heavily regulated by the government and the traditional lump‐sum‐only severance benefit plans already exist, requiring interfacing newly adopted plans with existing ones. Using the GARCH estimation method, the market model applied in this article for the relatively long period 1975–1995 yields evidence that suggests that the stock market responds to some of the more specific characteristics of adopted plans. Alternative specifications of the pension “event” also suggest that relatively little of the market impact comes from public announcements about pension adoption occasioned by the release of a firm's financial statement.     

An Examination of ERR and Asset Allocation in Public Pension Plans

In this paper, we examine the usefulness of expected rates of return (ERR) for public pension plans. Specifically, we test the correlation between the expected rate of return on plan assets and asset allocation. We also examine the predictive power of ERR on the actual returns of the pension assets. We find that the correlation between expected return and the percentage of assets that are equity securities is relatively weak. Further, we find that the percentage of assets that are equity securities is a much better predictor of actual returns than the disclosed expected return in public pension plans. These results provide evidence to support SFAS No. 87 , which requires the disclosure of plan assets and against recently promulgated SFAS No. 132 , which eliminates this disclosure requirement. The evidence also supports GASB 25'sStatement of Net Plan Assets .     

Defined Contribution Pension Plans: Determinants of Participation and Contributions Rates

Records of 793,794 employees eligible to participate in 647 defined contribution pension plans are studied. About 71% of them choose to participate in the plans, and of the participants, 12% choose to contribute the maximum allowed, $10,500. The main findings are (other things equal) (1) participation rates, contributions and (most remarkably) savings rates increase with compensation; on average, a $10,000 increase in compensation is associated with a 3.7% higher participation probability and $900 higher contribution; (2) women’s participation probability is 6.5% higher than men’s and they contribute almost $500 more than men; (3) participation probabilities are similar for employees covered and not covered by DB plans, but those covered by DB plans contribute more to the DC plans; (4) the availability of a match by the employer increases employees’ participation and contributions; the effect is strongest for low-income employees; (v) participation rates, especially among low-income employees, are higher when company stock is an investable fund.

养老金计划与个人所得税政策

不同税制模式和个人所得税征税方式对养老金计划的影响不同,而养老金计划的个人所得税政策如何定位又主要取决于公共政策对储蓄以及不同储蓄形式的态度。比较国际实践,从税制模式、储蓄传统和长期资产管理来看,我国公共政策不需要鼓励养老金储蓄,但从金融体系的稳定和长远发展来看,又需要对养老金储蓄形式给予一定的鼓励。因此,我国个人所得税政策应该对其给予适当税收激励,但不需要很大力度。考虑到我国分类征收的个人所得税制,本文认为,我国个人所得税对养老金计划应该采取TEE模式(养老金缴款不允许税前扣除、对未支付的资本收益或资本利得不征税、对领取的全部养老金收入不征税)。     

Modeling a Dynamic Portfolio for Pension Plans in Emerging Markets With Myopic and Nonmyopic Behavior

ABSTRACT

We introduce a dynamic formulation for the problem of portfolio selection of pension funds in the absence of a risk-free asset. In emerging markets, a risk-free asset might be unavailable, and the approaches commonly used may no longer be suitable. We use a parametric approach to combine dynamic programming and Monte Carlo simulation to gain additional flexibility. This approach is general in the sense that optimal asset allocation is tractable for all HARA utility functions in the absence of a risk-free asset. The traditional case composed of several risky assets and one risk-free asset is compared to a case in which the risk-free asset is unavailable.     

中小企业集合年金计划研究

中国企业年金市场已初具规模,但中小企业的计划参与率仍很低。为扩大中小企业年金计划覆盖面,发达国家和地区大多建立起了集合年金计划。中小企业建立集合年金计划可以获得多方面优势,是我国中小企业的现实选择。当前我国金融机构通过不同的运营合作模式开始探索建立起各类集合年金计划,然而受中小企业自身特性的局限和我国企业年金体制中现存问题的制约,当前我国迫切需要进一步建立和完善中小企业集合年金计划。     

Determinants of Real Estate Asset Allocations in Private and Public Pension Plans

Numerous studies have examined the factors associated with allocation of corporate and government pension-plan assets. Yet to date there has been no attempt to identify the sponsor-related conditions that affect the percentage of U.S. private and public pension-fund assets invested in real estate. The purpose of this article is to examine various asset-and liability-matching hypotheses regarding pension-plan asset allocations. Models are specified for both corporate and government defined-benefit plans that relate the characteristics of each plan to the percentage allocated to real estate investments. Our results confirm the existence of a significant size effect for both corporate and government pension plans, although we find mean levels of real estate allocation to be much lower than those suggested in previous real estate allocation studies. The article, however, contains some anomalous findings. In particular, our findings suggest that pension-plan sponsors do not hedge their real estate risk. We also find that pension-plan sponsors do not invest in real estate, as theory might suggest, to minimize the noise level in their pension liabilities.     

Pension Contributions and Firm Performance: Evidence from Frozen Defined Benefit Plans

We study the impact of freezing defined benefit (DB) pension plans and replacing them with defined contribution (DC) plans on liquidity, financial leverage, investment, and market value of a sample of firms over 2001‐2008. We find evidence that the pension freeze tends to attenuate the drain on corporate liquidity and relieve the pressure to borrow to pay for mandatory contributions (MCs) associated with underfunded DB plans. Although investors seem to favor the pension freeze as evidenced by positive announcement abnormal stock returns, there is little reliable evidence that the freeze increases investment efficiency and long‐term stock performance.     

Investment and Financing Constraints: Evidence from the Funding of Corporate Pension Plans

I exploit sharply nonlinear funding rules for defined benefit pension plans in order to identify the dependence of corporate investment on internal financial resources in a large sample. Capital expenditures decline with mandatory contributions to DB pension plans, even when controlling for correlations between the pension funding status itself and the firm's unobserved investment opportunities. The effect is particularly evident among firms that face financing constraints based on observable variables such as credit ratings. Investment also displays strong negative correlations with the part of mandatory contributions resulting solely from unexpected asset market movements.     

服务市场营销策略探讨

服务市场营销和产品市场营销相比具有以下特点:服务市场营销服务是无形的特点;服务具有不可分性;服务的易消失性;服务的差异性较大;时间因素的重要性;分销渠道的不同;营销组合不同.结合我国目前服务企业的经营现状和服务产品的特性,应采取如下的营销策略:树立全心全意为顾客服务的现代经营理念;根据顾客的需要制定服务产品的策略;考虑服务产品特点的定价策略;服务产品的有形化策略;服务的技巧化策略;服务关系化策略.     

金融服务与市场营销策略

对金融企业而言，面对随着入世而来的更加开放金融市场，应当运用市场营销的手段捕捉商机，包括产品策略的应用，价格策略的运用，市场定位策略的运用，竞争战略的运用，公共关系的运用等。     

Voluntary Contributions to Personal Pension Plans: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

In this paper, we use data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the years 1992 to 1998 to study the determinants of saving in the form of voluntary contributions to personal pension plans (PPPs). We first estimate a probit model with selection for the probability of making these voluntary contributions. We then estimate a random‐effects tobit regression for the amounts contributed and compare the results with those of a similar regression for conventional saving. Our findings suggest that voluntary contributions to PPPs are made essentially for retirement purposes, whereas conventional saving is undertaken for precautionary motives. The former type of saving is thus unlikely to offset the latter completely.     

An Explanation of Negative Swap Spreads: Demand for Duration from Underfunded Pension Plans

The 30‐year U.S. swap spreads have been negative since September 2008. We offer a novel explanation for this persistent anomaly. Through an illustrative model, we show that underfunded pension plans optimally use swaps for duration hedging. Combined with dealer banks' balance sheet constraints, this demand can drive swap spreads to become negative. Empirically, we construct a measure of the aggregate funding status of defined benefit pension plans and show that this measure helps explain 30‐year swap spreads. We find a similar link between pension funds' underfunding and swap spreads for two other regions.