On 4 August 2011 the Japanese Diet passed an amendment enabling company employees to contribute to corporate defined contribution pension plans. Until then only employers were able to contribute. As a result of the amendment, however, plan participants are able since January 2012 to make their...

A comprehensive financial and superannuation projection model is developed to investigate the impact of the introduction of AASB 119 on employer sponsors of defined benefit superannuation funds. A model Plan is projected forward 25 to 30 years. It is found that closing a plan to new entrants can...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present novel empirical findings regarding the shareholder-management agency problem. Design/Methodology/Approach – The paper presents new evidence regarding the shareholder-management agency problem. It expands the set of factors that may cause...

I test whether the introduction of a new pension standard (FRS 17) in the U.K., which virtually eliminated the smoothing mechanisms in pension accounting, is associated with a reallocation of assets from equities to bonds in defined benefit pension plans. My findings indicate that sample firms...

Default features in defined-contribution plans are designed to improve the retirement security of plan participants. To date, these have focused on the challenge of saving, ignoring the more complex challenge of dissaving. Automatic default provisions for drawing down participant account...

We examine the investment performance of over 160 thousand U.S. private pension plans. We find significant economies of scale in performance and administrative expenses, which are more prominent for defined benefit (DB) plans than for defined contribution (DC) plans. DC plans outperform...

The impact of a switch of management company on pension plan fees is analyzed by comparing the effects on employer-sponsored versus individual defined-contribution private pension plans in Spain. This framework is ideal because the two types differ significantly both in plan governance structure...

We use a historical experiment to test whether U.S. corporate defined benefit pension plans strategically use regulatory freedom to lower the reported value of pension liabilities, and hence required cash contributions. For some years, pension plans were required to estimate two liabilities -...

This paper examines the effect of objective function structures on the optimal management decisions (in particular, asset allocation and surplus/deficit spread period) for a model defined benefit superannuation scheme. The objectives of employer-sponsors, members and trustees are identified,...