Countercyclical Income Risk and Portfolio Choices: Evidence from Sweden

Abstract

Using Swedish administrative panel data, we document that workers facing higher left-tail income risk when equity markets perform poorly are less likely to participate in the stock market and, conditional on participation, have lower equity shares. In line with theory, the relationship between cyclical skewness and stock holdings is proportional to the share of human capital in a worker’s total wealth and vanishes as workers get closer to retirement. Cyclical skewness also predicts portfolio differences within pairs of identical twins. Our findings show that households hedge against correlated tail risks, an important mechanism in asset pricing and portfolio choice models.

Keywords: Household Finance, Labor Income Risk, Portfolio Choices