Ph.D. Student Spotlight
Minjoo Kim
My advisers are finance professors Clemens Sialm, Laura Starks, and Mindy Xiaolan. My work studies how economic constraints and opportunities shape household financial decisions, with a focus on retirement saving and insurance markets. My dissertation shows that credit constraints are a key driver of retirement preparedness: When access to credit is limited, households are more likely to cut contributions. Also, expanded credit access leads households to take more risk in their retirement portfolios, consistent with improved liquidity insurance enabling greater risk-taking. In related work with Sialm and Washington State University professor Hanjiang Zhang, we show that firm-specific performance and uncertainty shocks affect defined contribution saving by both employers and employees. I also study insurance markets, which are becoming an increasingly important constraint on household finances as climate risk grows. With my Ph.D. colleagues Prateek Mahajan and Zirui Wang, we document that commercial insurance costs have risen much faster than homeowner premiums across the U.S., and that states with more homeowner insurance regulations experience larger increases in commercial insurance costs, suggesting cost pressures spill over into the multifamily rental market.
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