The Community Development and Policy Studies division (CDPS) of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago hosted the Industrial Cities Initiative Symposium (ICI) on February 28, 2012. More than 50 economists, development professionals, city representatives, and analysts from business, academia, and...

Nationwide in the U.S. over the past 15 years, small businesses generated 64 percent of the net new job growth. Small businesses with fewer than 500 employees, a definition used by the Small Business Administration (SBA), represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms, and employ more than half of...

The Community Development and Policy Studies (CDPS) division of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago distributed a poll to small business intermediaries in the fourth quarter of 2012 to ask about their perceptions of small business conditions in their neighborhoods. The purpose of this poll was...

More than 280 municipalities surround the city of Chicago, with more than 120 in Cook County alone. The metropolitan region’s seven counties also include 123 townships, 307 school districts, 136 fire districts, 173 park districts, and 108 library districts. (GO TO 2040 2010) In recent years,...

The Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund came into existence in 1995 with the mission to "expand the capacity of financial institutions to provide credit, capital and financial services to underserved populations and communities in the United States" Since the recent economic...