Whether risk aversion is time-varying and countercyclical is central to modern asset pricing, yet evidence remains limited and is based mainly on experimental, survey, or aggregate stock market data. We provide individual-level evidence from 10 million Chinese auto insurance contracts from 2011 to 2017, estimating policyholders’ risk aversion from deductible choices. We find that risk aversion is time-varying and countercyclical. The estimates are negatively related to lottery and stock trading, positively related to insurance sales and bond trading, and vary with psychological factors, including seasonal mood, “zodiac year,” and calendar events.

Using data on nearly 20,000 restaurants in China during the COVID-19 outbreak, we find evidence that the government-sponsored rent reduction program reduced debt overhang problems. Rent reductions, which averaged 36,000 RMB per restaurant, increase the open rate of restaurants by 3.7%, revenue by 11,000 RMB, and the number of employees by 0.36. Larger restaurants with higher committed costs benefit more from the rent reduction. The stimulus has a positive spillover effect that boosts the revenue of restaurants in the immediate vicinity of subsidized restaurants. The treatment effect varies with organizational structure in a manner consistent with an information frictions hypothesis.

We use a unique quasi-experiment–spillovers from the imposition of purchase restrictions on local housing to nearby unregulated cities–to study the effects of out-of-town housing demand on house prices and consumer spending. While these restrictions effectively stymied the surge in local house prices, they induced capital flight and sharp abnormal increases in house prices in nearby unregulated cities. The effect of the house price increases on consumer spending is positive in the aggregate, but echoing Favilukis and Van Nieuwerburgh (2021), is redistributive, that is, negative for renters and positive for homeowners.