This paper examines the role increasing personal wealth and home equity withdrawal (HEW) have had in the decline in the personal saving rate in the United States. It does so by comparing the U.S. experience with those of Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Mortgage market liberalization and innovation should reduce household cash flow and collateral constraints while making housing wealth more liquid as HEW becomes easier over time. Regression analysis indicates the expected negative relationship between U.S. saving and net worth, with a somewhat smaller coefficient than in previous studies. HEW is estimated to have a temporary negative impact on saving of the order of 20 cents on the dollar.

Available online via SciVerse ScienceDirect, or in print for a limited time only, The International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home, Seven Volume Set is the first international reference work for housing scholars and professionals, that uses studies in economics and finance, psychology, social policy, sociology, anthropology, geography, architecture, law, and other disciplines to create an international portrait of housing in all its facets: from meanings of home at the microscale, to impacts on macro-economy. This comprehensive work is edited by distinguished housing expert Susan J. Smith, together with Marja Elsinga, Ong Seow Eng, Lorna Fox O'Mahony and Susan Wachter, and a multi-disciplinary editorial team of 20 world-class scholars in all. Working at the cutting edge of their subject, liaising with an expert editorial advisory board, and engaging with policy-makers and professionals, the editors have worked for almost five years to secure the quality, reach, relevance and coherence of this work. A broad and inclusive table of contents signals (or tesitifes to) detailed investigation of historical and theoretical material as well as in-depth analysis of current issues. This seven-volume set contains over 500 entries, listed alphabetically, but grouped into seven thematic sections including methods and approaches; economics and finance; environments; home and homelessness; institutions; policy; and welfare and well-being. Housing professionals, both academics and practitioners, will find The International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home useful for teaching, discovery, and research needs. International in scope, engaging with trends in every world region The editorial board and contributors are drawn from a wide constituency, collating expertise from academics, policy makers, professionals and practitioners, and from every key center for housing research Every entry stands alone on its merits and is accessed alphabetically, yet each is fully cross-referenced, and attached to one of seven thematic categories whose ‘wholes' far exceed the sum of their parts

This issue features a timely paper by Vladimir Klyuev and Paul Mills on the role of personal wealth and home equity withdrawal in the decline in the U.S. saving rate. Lusine Lusinyan and Leo Bonato explain how work absence in 18 European countries affects labor supply and demand. And a paper by Paolo Manasse (University of Bologna) entitled "Deficit Limits and Fiscal Rules for Dummies" examines fiscal frameworks.

Housing and Home Unbound pioneers understandings of housing and home as a meeting ground in which intensive practices, materials and meanings tangle with extensive economic, environmental and political worlds. Cutting across disciplines, the book opens up the conceptual and empirical study of housing and home by exploring the coproduction of the concrete and the abstract, the intimate and the institutional, the experiential and the collective. Exploring diverse examples in Australia and New Zealand, contributors address the interleaving of money and materials in the digital commodity of real estate, the neoliberal invention of housing as a liquid asset and source of welfare provision, and the bundling of car and home in housing markets. The more-than-human relations of housing and home are articulated through the role of suburban nature in the making of Australian modernity, the marketing of nature in waterfront urban renewal, the role of domestic territory in subversive social movements such as Seasteading and Tiny Houses, and the search for home comfort through low-cost energy efficiency practices. The transformative politics of housing and home are explored through the decolonizing of housing tenure, the shaping of housing policy by urban social movements, the lived importance of marginal spaces in Indigenous and other housing, and the affective lessons of the ruin. Beginning with the diverse elements gathered together in housing and home, the text opens up the complex realities and possibilities of human dwelling.

House prices and mortgage debt have moved to centre stage in the management of national economies, regional development and neighbourhood change. Describing, analysing and understanding how housing markets work within and across these scales of economy and society has never been more urgent. But much more is known about the macro-scales than the microstructures; and about the economic rather than social drivers of housing market dynamics. This book redresses the balance. It shows that housing markets are social, cultural and psychological – as well as economic – affairs. This multidisciplinary approach is helpful in understanding the economic staples of supply, demand, price and information. It also casts new light on the emotional and political economy of markets.

Prevailing economic theory attributes the 2008 crash and the Great Recession that followed to low interest rates, relaxed borrowing standards, and the housing price bubble. After careful analyses of statistical evidence, however, Matthew Drennan discovered that income inequality was the decisive factor behind the crisis. Pressured to keep up consumption in the face of flat or declining incomes, Americans leveraged their home equity to take on excessive debt. The collapse of the housing market left this debt unsupported, causing a domino effect throughout the economy. Drennan also found startling similarities in consumer behavior in the years leading to both the Great Depression and the Great Recession. Offering an economic explanation of a phenomenon described by prominent observers including Thomas Piketty, Jacob Hacker, Robert Kuttner, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz, Drennan’s evenhanded analysis disproves dominant theories of consumption and draws much-needed attention to the persisting problem of income inequality.