There are different types of DB plan freezes. In a hard freeze, a company stops
accruing additional benefits to all employees who currently participate in the plan. In a
fully funded plan that is hard frozen, all employees become fully vested immediately
in benefits earned under the plan; however, they are not entitled to earn additional
benefits. A soft freeze generally limits pension credits for future years of work under
the plan, although allowances for compensation increases may be made. In a partialfreeze, the firm ceases or limits the accrual of additional benefits for some but not all
employees. The types of freezes differ in the magnitude rather than in the nature of
their effect on pension accruals. Therefore, we choose to examine DB plan freezes
broadly and do not make a distinction among the different types of freezes in our main
tests of hypotheses.