Market-Related Values and Pension Accounting

Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 87 - Employers' Accounting for Pensions (SFAS No. 87) and Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 106 - Employers' Accounting for Postretirement Benefits other than Pensions (SFAS No. 106) allow firms to compute the expected return on plan assets by multiplying rate of return assumptions by fair values or smoothed fair values (moving averages of fair values) of plan assets. In an equity market with large price changes, the smoothed fair value of plan assets can differ considerably from the fair value. For example, during the strong bull market of the late 1990s, fair values exceeded smoothed fair values by more than 20 percent for some firms. This study examines the financial statement effect of using smoothed fair values instead of fair values and whether the market adjusts for these different accounting choices. We find that a majority of our sample uses some form of smoothed fair value to compute its expected returns and that smoothing firms are significantly larger than non-smoothers. Further, smoothing reduces earnings per share by more than 4.0% (9.8%) for the upper quarter (tenth) of our firms depending on the year. We find limited evidence that the market adjusts equity prices for income differences caused by firms using smoothed fair values instead of fair values.