Pension accounting and research: A review

This paper provides a review of empirical research on pension accounting. Empirical research on pension accounting has focused mainly on two issues, the value relevance of pension accounting information and earnings management in pension accounting. Further work has been done on the information efficiency of capital markets with regard to pension accounting information. I outline how research in these areas has evolved over the past decades and discuss the results that have been obtained. I also point out methodological issues. Furthermore, this review reveals that almost all existing studies on pension accounting are based on US accounting and capital-market data. I therefore discuss which effects national or regional differences in, for instance, pension regulation, taxation, funding, have on the production of pension accounting information by preparers, and on the processing of this information by analysts, investors and other users. Finally, I highlight that national institutional differences as well as ongoing changes to pension accounting standards raise interesting opportunities for future empirical research on pension accounting.

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