Essays in Finance.

Summary The three chapters of this thesis study the financial choices of households over the course of their lives. In the first chapter, I use French administrative data on job-creating entrepreneurs to estimate a life-cycle model in which risk-averse individuals can start a business and return to wage employment. I estimate that the unobserved benefits of entrepreneurship amount to 6,100 euros per year, or 67,000 over the lifetime of a firm. In the second chapter, I estimate a portfolio choice model that takes into account the relationship between stock market returns and the asymmetry of idiosyncratic income shocks. The cyclicality of this asymmetry may explain why young or modestly wealthy households invest little in the stock market, and why the share of their wealth invested in stocks grows until retirement age.In the third chapter, I calibrate a portfolio choice model in which the labor market and the stock market are cointegrated. I estimate that the certainty equivalent of pension entitlements for employed households is 46% lower than the sum of annualized payments at the risk-free rate. At the national level, the adjusted value of pension entitlements is $19.6 trillion, or 37% less than the unadjusted value of $31 trillion.