Based on theoretical advice and empirical evidence suggesting that risk taking in asset allocation enhances pension returns, we evaluate empirically whether good corporate governance leads to a larger allocation of pension assets to risky securities as compared to safe investments. Our findings suggest that firms with good external and internal corporate governance take more risk by investing heavily in equities and allocating a smaller share of the plan assets to cash, government debt, and insurance company accounts. The main underlying mechanisms appear to be higher investment returns and better pension funding status associated with higher equity and lower safe asset allocations.

Building on the work of Das and Sundaram (2007), we develop a widely applicable model to price securities subject to interest rate, equity, and default risks and use it to price exchangeable bonds. The extension features a trivariate recombining lattice instead of the original model’s bivariate recombining lattice. We also show how to estimate some critical non-observable inputs to implement the model by using current market data so that the model’s prices reflect current market information. We test the model on a sample of exchangeable bonds to determine the model’s empirical performance. Besides exchangeable bonds, we can also use the model to price securities such as reverse exchangeable bonds, bonds exchangeable to indexes, and bonds exchangeable to commodities.