This is the first part of a series that was looking to answer the question of why impact investors have not embraced the U.S. municipal bond market. Short-answer: it is complicated. But the root of it is in disclosure practices that are unique to the marketplace.
Someone smarter than me offered a funny anecdote recently: “If a group of people today were to come together and decide on the best way to finance U.S. state and local government projects the last thing they would end up with is the current U.S. muni market.” I agree with that but there is a reason it is the way it is.
This first part of the series looks at a bit of the history and offers some broad new ways to think about what information should be offered to the public if impact investors were to engage the market, but also in generally things that would benefit community finance in general.