Alamosa Public Library

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.

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...

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...

School attendance rates of girls are hypothesized to be negatively affected by menstruation in countries such as Nepal where traditional attitudes and taboo may surround transitions into womanhood. Girls' school experiences during adolescence may be impacted by menstruation and by exclusionary social practices surrounding it in certain world cultures. A goal of our ongoing research is to identify factors, both economic and social, that impact school...

Rental prices in Colorado are unusually high in terms of their share of renters' income. Accelerating rents in metropolitan areas of Colorado area driving force behind the widening rental price gap between the US and Colorado. Colorado potentially faces a constrained entrepreneurial environment due to these rising rent burdens.

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.

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.

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...

There are a number of competitive strategic positions emerging in the food manufacturing sector. Consumer trends and new competitive factors have resulted in a bimodal structure in a number of food and beverage subsectors, several of which are presented as case studies here. Such restructuring may provide market access and economic development opportunities.

In 2018 Nourish Colorado's Double Up Food Bucks program provided $167,911 of incentives that resulted in $452K of economic impact to Colorado's economy. Fruit and vegetable incentive programs provide economy-wide benefits in addition to the health benefits for low-income families of more affordable produce. Nourish Colorado is a non-profit based in Denver, CO that works to ensure all Coloradans have equitable access to nourishing food.