ABSTRACT: I examine whether firms alter their behavior in response to changes in accounting standards that mandate new financial statement disclosures. While prior research suggests that new recognition rules lead to changes in firm behavior, there is limited evidence that disclosure rules can impact firm behavior. This study helps to fill this void in the literature by examining the economic consequences of the mandated disclosures of pension asset composition required under SFAS 132R. Under pension accounting rules, the composition of pension assets is a key determinant of the assumed expected rate of return (ERR) on pension assets. I find that when firms disclose asset composition for the first time under SFAS 132R, firms that were previously using upward-biased ERRs respond by increasing asset allocation to high-risk securities and/or reducing the ERR assumption. While disclosure requirements arguably create less powerful incentives to alter firm decisions than recognition requirements, these findings offer evidence that firms alter behavior in response to disclosure standards. Data Availability: The data used in this study are publicly available from the sources indicated in the text.

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.