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...

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.

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 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.

Innovation can be defined as a product, process, or service that generates new value in the market. The outcome of innovation could be a physical product, or something less tangible such as a new way of isolating proteins for genetic research. Innovation is difficult to measure directly, so we separately measure four key components of innovation: talent, ideas, capital, and entrepreneurship. The first three components are necessary to produce 'raw'...

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...

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...

Representative data suggests that risk associated with lack of field sanitation is relatively low on U.S. farms. Data for the agricultural region that includes Colorado suggests that this region was a first mover in terms of the availability of toilets for farmworkers, but more closely followed national trends of increased access to hand wash and drinking water over time. Basic field sanitation definitions in available data are limited, however, and...