The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) insures private sector defined benefit (DB) pension plans when an employer becomes insolvent and is unable to pay its pension liabilities. In principle, the insurance premiums collected by PBGC should be sufficient to cover potential losses; this...

Failure to correct for pension risk leads to upward-biased discount rate estimates in firms with pension risk exposure. The result is a negative and economically significant relation between pension risk and corporate investment. The effect is confined to investment decisions that require...