Colorado State University. Regional Economic Development Institute.

Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), I look at the intersection of the unemployment provisions of the CARES Act, Colorado's unemployment insurance (UI) scheme, and the Colorado labor market.

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.

This policy brief aims to increase understanding of expenditure patterns and economic impacts stemming from $88.9 million federal agricultural conservation easement program payments to the state of Colorado. An anticipated $195 million in generated economic activity and more than 1,200 jobs from federal agricultural conservation easement payments is a sizable and important contribution to the state. Anticipated easement payments will provide an...

Charter schools now educate six percent of U.S. schoolchildren nationally. Charter school adoption has been highly uneven across the United States and across Colorado counties. Colorado in 2019 has been ranked second in the nation for the strength of their laws supporting charter schools. Proliferation of charter schools in Colorado is one reflection of the state's broader innovative and entrepreneurial capacities.

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.

In 2017, 3/4 of all US businesses were nonemployers. 41% of nonemployer establishments were female-led, and female-led ventures accounted for 24% of total nonemployer revenues. Non employers are growing steadily in Colorado. Nonemployer growth among Colorado women is driven by growth in businesses owned by women of color in metropolitan areas.

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...

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...

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...