We investigate whether a firm's share of the underfunding in its multiemployer defined-benefit pension plans (MEPPs) is priced by shareholders and creditors. Prior to the FASB's new MEPP standard (effective December 2011), when the disclosures on such plans were sparse, we find evidence (some...

We predict and find that short-selling constraints combined with investor disagreement cause prices to respond more strongly to bad earnings news than to good earnings news, an asymmetry characterized by Skinner and Sloan as the “torpedo effect.” However, in the absence of short-sales...

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...

As an alternative way to shed light on the debate over whether the modified Dechow and Dichev (2002) AQ measure is a priced risk factor, we examine the effect of seasonality on the pricing of AQ. We find that (1) high AQ stocks outperform low AQ stocks only in January; (2) during the rest of the...