Zdravka Todorova s book breaks new ground in three heterodox traditions. Todorova combines post Keynesian monetary theory of production (specifically a neo-Chartalist approach) with original institutional economics (specifically the Veblen-Ayres framework) with a feminist analysis of the role of gender that includes households, production and finance in capitalist economies in an integrated framework. Her success in developing this analysis involves both substantive theoretical and methodological advances in all three approaches to understanding the economy. Her project is simply astonishing in scope. . . Money and Households in a Capitalist Economy is a very important book. It is well written and well argued. Every post Keynesian, institutionalist and feminist economist should read it. The European Association for Political Economy and the Association for Evolutionary Economics awarded the International Prize commemorating the 150th anniversary of Thorstein Veblen s birth to Zdravka Todorova for this book. William Waller, Heterodox Economics Newsletter Todorova bridges the gap between feminist economics and macroeconomics in this pathbreaking work. Presenting an in-depth analysis of the relationship between monetarist theory and gender issues, Todorova traces the earliest history of monetary theory and its lack of gender analysis, and presents a lucid theory of the importance and consequence of embedding feminist economics in a macroeconomic framework. Informative and enthusiastic, the book is written in a clear, easy-to-read style. Apart from being a significant contribution toward discovering previously unexplored synergies between two branches of economics, the book also offers a major boost to feminist economics. More specifically, the contention that monetary theory is not separate from, but linked with, feminist studies is powerful. Essential. S. Chaudhuri, Choice Dr Todorova is part of a new vanguard of multi-hats heterodox economists and it is this vanguard that will determine the future developments in heterodox economics. Money and Households in a Capitalist Economy breaks new ground integrating microeconomic and macroeconomic approaches to household consumption and finance, while providing a gendered analysis. Frederic S. Lee, University of Missouri, Kansas City, US Dr Todorova successfully extends what is widely known as the UMKC approach to monetary theory into entirely new areas, namely, feminist economics and the study of the household. She provides perhaps the clearest and most concise explication of the chartal money view, and shows how it helps us to understand the role played by the household in the modern capitalist economy. She sheds new light on our current situation. L. Randall Wray, University of Missouri Kansas City, US Post Keynesian analyses of monetary production have not given much attention to households as institutions, while a good deal of the literature in feminist economics discusses households in a strictly microeconomic context, with little consideration of monetary phenomena. This book, a unique study of the capitalist economy, utilizes a distinctive combination of Post Keynesian, institutional, and gender analysis to examine household economics in capitalist society in order to flesh out the gaps in each. The author poses questions that cut across rigidly determined areas of inquiry, such as gender and money, and micro- and macroeconomic analysis. She grounds the discussion of households and their social and financial relations within a monetary theory of production, and provides many methodological, theoretical, and policy formulation insights to establish a framework that illuminates current problems of household debt.

High household wealth is often cited as a key strength of the Italian economy. Both in absolute terms and relative to income, the Italian household sector is wealthier than most euro area peers. A sizable fraction of this wealth is held by the rich and upper middle classes. This paper documents the changes in the Italian household sector’s financial wealth over the past two decades, by constructing the matrix of bilateral financial sectoral exposures. Households became increasingly exposed to the financial sector, which in turn was exposed to the highly indebted real and government sectors. The paper then simulates different financial shocks to gauge the ability of the household sector to absorb losses. Simple illustrative calculations are presented for a fall in the value of government bonds as well as for bank bail-ins versus bailouts.

Editor Wolff is a leading authority on income, wealth, and inequality in the US, and contributing authors are well-respected experts in their field. Overall, the research is high quality, and most papers include a substantial list of references. A plethora of data is considered, and much statistical evidence is presented. . . . A useful contribution to the literature on income distribution and wealth inequality. Recommended. E. Kacapyr, Choice The contributors to this comprehensive book compile and analyse the latest data available on household wealth using, as case studies, the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Finland during the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. The authors show that in the US, trends are highlighted in terms of wealth holdings, among the low-income population, along with changes in wealth polarization, racial differences in wealth holdings, and the dynamics of portfolio choices. The consensus between the authors is that wealth inequality has generally risen among these OECD countries since the early 1980s, although Germany stands out as an exception. In the case of the US, it is also noted that wealth holdings have generally failed to improve among low-income families and that the racial wealth gap widened during the late 1980s. International Perspectives on Household Wealth also contains new results on a number of topics, including measures and changes of wealth polarization in the US, measurement and changes of portfolio span in the US, asset holdings of low-income households in the US, and the effects of parental resources on asset holdings in Chile. Academic, government, and public policy economists in OECD countries, as well as those in so-called middle-income countries around the world, will find much to engage them within this book. It will also appeal to academics and researchers of international and welfare economics and other social scientists interested in the issue of inequality.

This publication presents an internationally agreed set of guidelines for producing micro statistics on household wealth, It addresses the common conceptual, definitional and practical problems, and are meant to improve the comparability of country data.