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Journal Article
Islamic finance: meeting financial needs with faith based products
This article explores the demand for and the availability of financial products for Muslims who adhere to religious prohibitions against receiving and paying interest. This is an evolving area of consumer and small business finance, and the goal of this article is to provide an overview of the potential market for Islamic finance, to describe the organizations that currently provide these products, and to highlight some of the challenges of satisfying both religious tenets and government regulations. Two facets of financial products, asset financing, and investments, are addressed. ...
Journal Article
Minority-Owned Banks and Their Primary Local Market Areas
In this article, we analyze the experience and performance of MDIs in their primary local service areas in recent periods, including before, during, and after the 2008 financial crisis. We provide a review of the sector, highlighting key policies and initiatives pertaining to and affecting these institutions, and provide a brief review of previous research. We document trends in the sector, including: 1) the characteristics of the locations where MDIs tend to do business; 2) the changing landscape of MDIs in terms of openings, closings, and mergers by ethnic ownership; and 3) the performance ...
Journal Article
Childhood obesity: an issue for public health advocates, researchers, and community development practitioners
Obesity rates for U.S. children have risen precipitously over the past 20 years. According to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from 1999?2002, 15 percent of children on average, ages 2?19 are obese. With little evidence that individual weight loss programs can solve the problem, attention is increasingly turning to the environment in which children live, in an effort to understand both the causes of and potential solutions to childhood obesity. Drawing on recent research, this article provides an overview of childhood obesity trends from the 1970s to 2002, ...
Newsletter
Developing small businesses and leveraging resources in Detroit
On October 16?17, 2012, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Michigan Bankers Association, and the New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan co-sponsored a symposium that brought together business experts, business owners, policymakers, funders, and bankers to address the issues of small business credit and financing in Detroit.
Newsletter
Residential mobility and neighborhood characteristics in Chicago
Chicago neighborhoods vary widely in economic opportunity and well-being, and trends in population change reflect these disparities. According to census data, the city added about 50,000 residents between 2010 and 2020, but patterns differed considerably by neighborhood type. Some census tracts bore the largest burden of population loss, continuing a multi-decade period of decline, while several others saw rapid growth exceeding 10% per year.
CDFIs: Crucial Partners in the Public Finance Ecosystem
Community development financial institutions (CDFIs) are vital partners with state and local governments in projects aimed at assisting communities of people with low and moderate incomes (LMI communities) across the United States. Serving as intermediaries between public, philanthropic, and private sources of capital, CDFIs help deploy resources to improve economic opportunity in these communities. Government entities at all levels (federal, state, and local) work with nongovernmental actors, and CDFIs have been such partners, particularly for investments related to infrastructure as well as ...
Journal Article
Capital-raising among minority-owned banks before and after the financial crisis
The financial crisis and recession of 2008-2010 made the availability of capital a significant area of concern for community banks, and led many of these institutions to seek out sources to rebuild their equity.1 The need for capital may have been even greater for some minority-owned financial institutions. Minority-owned depositories are a small subset of financial institutions, most of which are also community banks, reflecting either black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American ownership, or majority minority board members and a mission to serve minority populations. Regulators have long ...
Journal Article
Community banks: what is their future and why does it matter?
The U.S. banking system has undergone a dramatic restructuring since the 1970s. One of the biggest changes is the reduced number and market share of community banks. The number of banks with less than $1 billion in assets ? a common definition of community bank ? has declined from approximately 14,000 in 1980 to about 7,000 today. Concurrently, the proportion of assets held by the ten largest bank holding companies increased from less than 25 percent to more than 75 percent, while community banks? share fell from about one third of the market to well under one fifth
Journal Article
Measuring Small Business Financial Health
Throughout the Great Recession and continuing into the recovery, small businesses have played an important role in creating jobs and stabilizing communities. Stories of small business owners overcoming obstacles to provide valuable services and employment are highlighted regularly by pundits, politicians and policymakers alike. However, little attention has focused on the question of what drives the financial health of these often young, often very small businesses.