ABSTRACT This study examines whether institutional ownership and analyst following affect the value relevance of disclosed versus recognized pension liabilities. Using a sample of firms with pension liabilities that were disclosed under SFAS No. 87 and subsequently recognized under SFAS No. 158 from 1999 to 2007, I find that off-balance-sheet pension liabilities are more value relevant for firms with a higher level of institutional ownership or analyst following in the pre-158 period. More importantly, I find that SFAS No. 158 increases the value relevance of previously disclosed off-balance-sheet pension liabilities for firms with a low level of institutional ownership or analyst following, and that the increase in the value relevance becomes less pronounced for firms with a higher level of institutional ownership or analyst following. Overall, the results are consistent with the view that institutional ownership and analyst following affect the value relevance of disclosed information as well as the valuation difference between disclosed and recognized information. This study also highlights the importance of considering institutional ownership and analyst following in the value-relevance research. Data Availability: All data are publicly available from the sources indicated in the text.

Prior studies suggest that income smoothing may be used as an earnings management tool by managers, and is associated with stock price declines when companies subsequently break smoothing patterns. We contend that investors' negative reaction in these situations is also driven by their magnified concerns about firm information risk, in addition to their decreased earnings expectations. Consistent with this argument, we find that bid-ask spreads around unexpected loss announcements are greater when preceded by higher levels of income smoothing. Furthermore, total spreads before the loss announcements were not greater for firms that exhibited higher income smoothing but had not reported earlier losses. This suggests that investors had difficulties seeing through managerial opportunistic motives before the unexpected loss announcements. Additionally, we find that institutional ownership and sell-side analyst coverage appear to moderate the positive association between income smoothing and bid-ask spreads, consistent with the monitoring role institutional investors and financial analysts play in constraining managerial opportunism. We also detect a significant decrease in the extent of income smoothing following loss announcements. Overall, our results are consistent with the view that income smoothing may be viewed by investors as being motivated by managerial opportunism instead of as communicating the true earnings results. Further analysis suggests that pursing a moderate amount of volatility in reported earnings may be the optimal financial reporting policy.