Maarten Meeuwis

Assistant Professor of Finance

Using U.S. administrative data on worker earnings, we show that increases in risk premia lead to lower labor earnings, particularly for lower-paid workers. These declines are primarily driven by job separations. We build an equilibrium model of labor market search that quantitatively replicates the observed heterogeneity in labor market dynamics across worker earnings levels. Our findings underscore the role of time-varying risk premia as a key driver of labor market fluctuations and highlight the importance of both the job creation and the job destruction margins in understanding the heterogeneity in worker outcomes over the business cycle.

Using proprietary financial data on millions of households, we show that likely-Republicans increased the equity share and market beta of their portfolios following the 2016 presidential election, while likely-Democrats rebalanced into safe assets. We provide evidence that this behavior was driven by investors interpreting public information based on different models of the world. We use detailed controls to rule out the main nonbelief-based channels such as income hedging needs, preferences, and local economic exposures. These findings are driven by a small share of investors making big changes, and are stronger among investors who trade more ex ante.

Using data on the portfolios and income of millions of U.S. retirement investors, I find that positive and persistent shocks to income lead to a significant increase in the portfolio equity share, while increases in financial wealth due to realized returns lead to a small decline. The positive net effect in the data is evidence for risk aversion that decreases in total wealth. I estimate a portfolio choice model that matches the reduced-form estimates with a significant degree of non-homotheticity in risk preferences. Decreasing relative risk aversion preferences significantly increase the share of wealth at the top of the distribution.

We study how aggregate financial conditions shape firm insurance and, through it, labor income risk. In a directed search model with dynamic wage contracts and two-sided limited commitment, firm insurance against idiosyncratic shocks erodes when risk premia rise. Using U.S. administrative data, we document new evidence supporting the model: pass-through of firm shocks to earnings rises in bad times, especially for lower-paid workers near the separation margin. The model reproduces many untargeted time-series and cross-sectional features of earnings risk and implies substantial welfare costs of idiosyncratic risk, high private discount rates on human capital, and large gains from recession-contingent transfers.

Using administrative data on more than 36,000 advised Canadian retirees, we show that advised retirees keep about two-thirds of their portfolios in equities well into old age—30 to 40 percentage points more than non-advised retirees, target-date funds, or common rules of thumb. These allocations reflect active choices rather than inertia, and they adjust gradually toward a new advisor's investment style following advisor switches. Equity shares rise with relationship tenure, and advisor influence is strongest among clients with low financial knowledge or risk tolerance, consistent with trust facilitating risk-taking. We rationalize these portfolios in a standard life-cycle model with moderate risk aversion, given retirees' modest financial wealth relative to their safe pension income. Modeling advisors as “money doctors” who correct clients' pessimistic beliefs about the equity premium, we find that, relative to a no-advice counterfactual, the welfare gains from higher risk-taking are of the same order of magnitude as the cost of advice.

Households are subject to substantial tail risk in individual labor income, and the amount of income risk fluctuates over the business cycle. This paper proposes a New Keynesian production-based asset pricing model where idiosyncratic labor income risk is a key source of priced risk in equity markets. Uninsured income tail risk drives the aggregate demand for consumption goods through a time-varying precautionary saving motive, generating cyclicality in firm cash flows. In the cross section, firms facing more elastic demand are more exposed to fluctuations in idiosyncratic tail risk. This risk exposure is compensated by a significant and countercyclical risk premium in equity returns. Empirical findings support the predictions of the model.