Market Reaction to the Disclosure of Unfunded Pension Benefit Obligation Write-Off Policies in Japan Jong-Seo Choi* Pusan National University

This paper investigates whether stock prices react to the corporate disclosures of pension cost write-off policy, and if they do, whether the direction and the magnitude of such reaction are associated with the level of unfunded pension benefit obligation and firm profitability in the Japanese context. The results of the analysis partially support the signaling explanation whereby financially affordable firms with large amount of unfunded obligations are expected to be more likely to adopt shorter term based write-offs, which are rewarded with favorable price reactions