This article provides an overview of the potential market for Islamic finance and some of the challenges providers face in serving this unique market.

In the summer of 2007, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago convened four focus groups to explore the connections between insurance, the process of wealth building and preservation, and financial access for low- and moderate-income consumers. This article examines the findings from those focus...

Millions of low-income individuals in the U.S. are aided through community development programs, which are funded by federal, state, and local governments. The authors consider whether federal transfers and expenditures from moneys generated by states and localities respond to state-level trends...

Researchers at the Chicago Fed Insurance Initiative are analyzing the role that the insurance industry plays in financial markets and the economy as a whole. This article presents an overview of life insurers’ financial asset holdings, the industries they invest in, and how the value of their...

This article describes the liquidity of various life insurance products and provides a measure that can be used to characterize the liquidity of the liabilities of the industry as a whole or of a particular firm.

This article describes what sovereign wealth funds do, where their funding comes from, and what drives their investment strategies. It also highlights some of the policy issues that their activities raise.

Municipal bonds (munis) are issued by states, cities, or other local government agencies. They may be general obligations of the issuer or secured by specified revenues, like fees paid by tollway users. The interest on municipal bonds is usually exempt from federal income taxes. Investors have...