Book excerpt: Household finance studies is a relatively recent field, exploring a growing understanding of how households make financial decisions relating to the functions of consumption, payment, risk management, borrowing and investing; how institutions provide goods and services to satisfy these financial functions of households; and how interventions by firms, governments and other parties affect the provision of financial services. This timely book analyses existing findings about household behavior as well as findings related to policy interventions. With international case studies, this book reviews a topic of global importance and brings a crucial up-to-date survey of the field for researchers and postgraduate students.