Abstract: Earnings opportunities have different portfolio implications for households outside and inside the stock market. I measure earnings growth net of industry–education-specific age profiles in the Current Population Survey and relate its distribution to subsequent portfolios in the Survey of Income and Program Participation. At a given variance, a source standard deviation of upside composition predicts 0.88 percentage point more entry into stocks or mutual funds. Using real log earnings, the same composition measure predicts a 0.36-point higher subsequent risky share among initial nonholders and a 1.62-point lower share among holders. The negative holder association is not simply dilution from a growing financial-asset denominator. A model with participation costs and safe nontradable human capital generates the opposite allocation responses at unchanged earnings mean and variance. Earnings-tail composition connects market access and incumbent allocation in ways that variance alone cannot distinguish.

Abstract: Using transaction-level data on 189,530 Chinese retail investors over the 2013–2016 boom and bust, we measure experience as counts of large realized gains and losses and examine how these counts relate to the disposition effect, the tendency to sell winners and hold losers. A two-standard-deviation increase in accumulated large losses raises the propensity to sell winners rather than losers by about 23% of the baseline effect, while an equivalent increase in gains lowers it by about 21%. Under composition-matched simulations, experience-independent selling rules do not reproduce this asymmetry. To explain both the baseline effect and this asymmetry, we build a memory-based recall model in which similarity-weighted retrieval of past outcomes guides selling. A single retrieval channel reproduces all three patterns without shifting preferences.

Abstract: I study household saving designations and individual assets using 29 waves of the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers. Weaker national labor-market entry conditions predict more saving, mainly outside spouse-specific categories, but equal proportional responses cannot be rejected. Holding total saving fixed, wife-designated saving predicts greater subsequent growth in her securities holdings; deposit growth is imprecisely estimated. This securities association survives adjustment across the three asset outcomes and for baseline assets. Childhood-origin comparisons do not corroborate the national saving relationship. Saving designations contain financial information beyond aggregate flows, but the evidence does not establish a causal effect of early-career adversity.

Abstract: What does asking again add to a household-finance survey? I link two to six early intertemporal-choice responses from 3,099 Japanese households to financial wealth six to eight years after a baseline balance sheet. Compared with a flexible first answer, repeated category shares reduce held-out prediction error by an additional 1.57 percentage points of control-model loss when baseline wealth is unavailable, but only 0.008 points when it is included. The conditional gain varies across evaluation samples. A separate measurement problem remains: the displayed-rate wealth gradient depends heavily on the upper response category, and flexible category profiles reject its linear restriction. Repeated answers contain information about future reported financial position, but their predictive value depends on the information already observed and how the answers are represented.

Abstract: Employer insurance mandates impose different household costs on dependent spouses and direct contributors. We study Japan's 2016 expansion using married part-time women assigned before its 2012 announcement. From announcement to enforcement, relative membership in the ¥1.06–1.29 million earnings band falls more among dependent spouses: by 21.1 percentage points using main-job earnings and 15.4 using separately reported employment income. Documented nonenrolled work of at least 20 weekly hours also declines differentially. Historical-baseline contrasts are imprecise in the main comparison. Panel attrition and imprecise transition estimates limit causal conclusions about enrollment avoidance versus movement into covered jobs.

Abstract: Industrial employment can facilitate marriage through stable earnings while delaying household formation when jobs, housing, and residence are allocated together. We study this tension in China's Third Front using the 1982, 1990, and 2000 population censuses. In 1982, a 13.7-percentage-point increase in the registered heavy-industry share is associated with a 4.23-point larger gap in never-married rates between ages 20–24 and 30–34 inside designated provinces than elsewhere. Predetermined siting controls reduce the differential to 2.24 points. Retrospective first-marriage histories observed in 2000 yield a similar age profile, and education shares account for 15.5 percent of a comparable young–old gap. However, comparisons of pre-campaign and build-out cohorts do not yield a robust additional marriage shift inside Third Front provinces. The evidence documents a recurring association between industrial composition and young singlehood, rather than a causal effect of the construction campaign. It distinguishes a demographic pattern among residents of industrial places from an effect assigned to people exposed to a particular industrial policy.

Preliminary abstract: Does the same investor treat a loss differently when it is hers rather than an algorithm’s? We study 100,000 investors on Alipay’s Ant Fortune platform (September 2020 to September 2024) who simultaneously hold a self-directed mutual-fund portfolio and a robo-advisory account (BangNiTou). Comparing the same investor across two accounts that differ only in who chose the holdings, we find that the response to losses does not weaken under delegation—it reverses sign. On her own account she holds and adds to losers (averaging down); on the delegated account she sells losers and chases winners. A single loss-aversion parameter cannot produce this sign flip. It follows, we argue, from delegation changing what a return means: on her own account a loss is processed through realization utility, while on the delegated account it is both a signal about the algorithm and a source of dissonance she resolves by exiting. We estimate the model structurally and quantify the return investors forgo through self-directed loss aversion. Full empirical results remain in progress.

Abstract: Would a slow-selling home benefit more from better valuation information or from access to more buyers? I combine Beijing housing transactions, asking-price histories, and an estimated search-and-negotiation model. Both high and low recorded asks accompany long selling times, but pricing history changes the low-ask relationship. The premium associated with few comparable sales largely disappears after conditioning on signed asks. Greater baseline follower interest predicts fewer subsequent cuts. The model distinguishes difficulty finding buyers from waiting for an optimistic offer. Joint estimation of prices, concessions, and duration favors persistent differences in buyer access. Across six fitted models, 25% more buyer encounters shorten expected selling time by 11.00–11.58% and raise seller continuation value. Better information has less uniform benefits. An equal 20% reduction in posterior uncertainty barely speeds selling in the combined model and lowers seller value by 11.64%; an information-only model with a close predictive score shortens selling time by 10.22% and slightly raises seller value. Information can remove the optimistic offers that make waiting worthwhile. These conditional model comparisons separate faster turnover from the seller's benefit and explain why sparse trading need not imply that better information will restore liquidity.

Abstract: Can lower prices sustain housing trade when buyers cannot acquire the school rights enjoyed by existing owners? I study a Beijing reform that preserved the previous admission rules for eligible homeowners, while new buyers faced assignment across several schools. Linking enrollment notices to housing transactions, I compare winter-to-spring changes around January 2019 with the same seasons in earlier years. Sales remain roughly flat in formerly key-school neighborhoods but rise in ordinary-school neighborhoods. After adjusting for earlier seasonal patterns, the gap in relative sales growth is 32–45 percent; transaction prices are also 4–5 percent lower relative to ordinary-school neighborhoods. A matching model explains why price reductions need not restore trade when a sale changes the rights attached to a home. The model also shows that portable school rights can facilitate exchange while reducing other families' access when school places are fixed.

Abstract: Retirement distributions can accompany job changes without an interruption of employment. Using 39,481 SIPP person-years of prior workers with reported 401(k) or thrift ownership, I find that voluntary separators holding a job throughout the year have a 1.67-percentage-point higher non-rollover rate than continuers (95-percent interval [0.68,2.67]). Their median year-on-year change in nominal all-job earnings was 11 percent. In a separate resource comparison, the voluntary-separation gap is 3.76 points below one month of prior earnings in financial assets and 0.42 points above that threshold. The 3.34-point interaction survives multiple-testing adjustment and appears in both analysis windows. These observational findings place retirement cash-outs at the intersection of job mobility and limited financial resources; they do not identify the effects of separation or the use of withdrawn funds.