Derivatives are few and far between in countries where the compatibility of financial transactions with Islamic law requires the development of shari'ah-compliant structures. Islamic finance is governed by the shari'ah, which bans speculation and gambling, and stipulates that income must be...

The paper uses a combination of micro-level datasets to document the rise of income polarization - what some have referred to as the 'hollowing out' of the income distribution - in the United States, since the 1970s. While in the initial decades more middle-income households moved up, rather...

This paper exploits the Financial Accounts of the United States to derive long time series of bank and nonbank credit to different sectors, and to examine the cyclical behavior of these series in relation to (i) the long-term business cycle, (ii) recessions and recoveries, and (iii) systemic...

The U.S. labor force participation rate (LFPR) fell dramatically following the Great Recession and has yet to start recovering. A key question is how much of the post-2007 decline is reversible, something which is central to the policy debate. The key finding of this paper is that while around...

We show evidence that interest rate hikes slowdown loan growth but lead intermediation to migrate from banks' balance sheets to non-banks via increased securitization activity. As such, higher interest rates have the potential for unintended consequences; raising systemic risk rather than...