Colorado State University. Regional Economic Development Institute.

The Great Recession caused an unprecedented downturn in employer startups. The "startup slowdown" shifts job generation away from dynamic, young businesses, increasing the economy's reliance on existing establishments to expand. The downturn in startups also contributes to a decrease in economic dynamism, a crucial source of market information for future entrepreneurs.

Currently in Colorado, as in rest of the country, we are experiencing a health crisis caused by the novel coronavirus. The necessary social distancing measures to control this pandemic have already caused our economy to spiral and millions of people to lose their livelihoods. The health crisis has now evolved into an economic crisis, the impacts of which vary by gender, race/ethnicity, immigration statusand class. In this preliminary research, we...

The federal-state system of unemployment insurance (UI) in the US, designed to protect laid-off workers, is coming under pressure for an overhaul following the pandemic. Using the US Department of Labor's Quarterly UI Data Summary, this report will outline a number of facets pertaining to Colorado's own UI experience since 1980.

Despite the fact that they only employ their owner, there seems to exist a link between nonemployer activity and future changes in the number of employer establishments. Nonemployers might become employer establishments themselves - -and/or inspire other establishments to set up shop. A 10-percentage point increase in the growth rate of nonemployers is associated with a 2- to 4-percentage point uptick in the growth of employer establishments.

The share of deposits held in locally-owned banks has fallen steadily in the US and in Colorado since the 1990s. This shift has hit already-under-served rural Colorado counties especially hard. A decline in local bank shares imposes welfare costs on consumers and business ventures seeking financial services, and contributes to macroeconomic instability.

Nonemployer establishments, including "gig" workers, have grown steadily in number over the past two decades, while growth in employer establishments has been inconsistent. In particular, the Great Recession of 2007-2009 appears to have had a dramatic negative effect on net establishment growth. Here is an analysis to look separately at openings and closures. All figures discussed here refer to employer establishments, businesses or business locations...

We examine whether the use of open educational resources (OER), increasingly used as a reaction to high textbook costs, have a negative effect on performance of students. We analyze student performance data from courses using OER that had previously used commercial textbooks. We find no statistically significant results that OER use reduces student performance or, conversely, that the use of commercial textbooks improves student performance. Our research...

The spring semester for students in K-12 and colleges and universities in Colorado started as any normal semester. Because of COVID-19, however, schools started to close and offer remote instruction around spring break. As institutions of higher learning adapted to the 'new normal', they offered asynchronous, synchronous, and blended or hybrid options for students. This sudden switch had an impact on all. Our interest was to see if this sudden switch...

Using local-level data on incarceration rates by race, we explore the relationship between income inequality, poverty, and incarceration at the commuting zone level from 1950 to the present. We find that labor markets with higher levels of inequality experienced larger increases in overall incarceration, and that relative rates of poverty play a key role in explaining the differential effects of mass incarceration across race. Areas where white poverty...

Agritourism has been recognized as an entrepreneurial activity that has the potential to diversify agricultural businesses and stimulate rural development of surrounding communities. From 2007-2012, the number of farms and ranches with agritourism in the U.S. grew 42%, and grew 27% in Colorado. Most Colorado agritourism operations and counties with high agritourism revenues are located near natural capital and/or assets, such as those in the Rocky...