This paper shows that securities with a non-linear payoff design can foster household risk-taking. We demonstrate this effect empirically by exploiting the introduction of capital guarantee products in Sweden from 2002 to 2007. The fast and broad adoption of these products is associated with an...

We use a detailed panel data set of Swedish households to investigate the relation between their labor income risk and financial investment decisions. In particular, we relate changes in wage volatility to changes in the portfolio holdings for households that switched industries between 1999 and...

Using Swedish administrative panel data, we show 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. We call this measure of income risk "cyclical...