The Economic Consequences of Accounting Standards: Evidence from Risk-Taking in Pension Plans
研究了养老金会计准则中预期回报率（ERR）的取消如何影响企业养老金投资的风险承担，发现受IAS 19R影响的加拿大企业相比未受影响的美国企业显著降低了风险承担，为会计准则的经济后果提供了实证证据。
ABSTRACT Experts have long conjectured that pension accounting rules, by which pension expense depends on a managerial estimate that is directly tied to the riskiness of plan assets (i.e., the expected rate of return, or ERR, on plan assets), encourage risk-taking with pension investments. The recent passage of IAS 19, Employee Benefits (Revised) (hereafter, IAS 19R) eliminates the ERR and replaces it with a managerial estimate unrelated to plan asset riskiness (the discount rate). We demonstrate that a sample of Canadian firms affected by IAS 19R reduces risk-taking in pension investments post-IAS 19R, compared to a control sample of U.S. firms unaffected by IAS 19R. Therefore, removing firms' ability to recognize immediately in net income the expected higher returns from risk-taking (via a higher ERR) reduces their propensity for that risk-taking—providing some of the first empirical evidence on the economic consequences of eliminating the ERR-based pension accounting model.