Using a hand-collected executive pension database, we study how both CEO and non-CEO executive compensation structures affect the overall risk of a firm. We accomplish three major objectives: (i) we provide a significant extension of the Sundaram and Yermack (2007) research framework by...

Theory predicts that stockholders of firms with defined-benefit pension plans will engage in risk-shifting by underfunding plans and investing plan assets in risky securities, as their firms approach distress. The empirical evidence so far has, however, been consistent more with risk-management...

Because public firms are not required to disclose the monetary value of pension plans in their executive pay disclosures, financial economists have generally analyzed executive pay using figures that do not include the value of such pension plans. This paper presents evidence that omitting the...

Managers appear to manipulate firm earnings when they characterize pension assets to capital markets and alter investment decisions to justify, and capitalize on, these manipulations. We construct a measure of the sensitivity of reported earnings to the assumed long-term rate of return on...

Using panel data for nearly 1,000 companies during 1991 to 2000, this paper documents that the average share of participant's discretionary 401(k) contributions in company stock was almost 20 percent, and then relates this share to plan design features and firm financial characteristics. We find...