- March 2024
- Jorgen Rasmussen, Stephan Weiler
- Housing, Marijuana
- As the first state to adopt legal recreational marijuana, Colorado has served as the proverbial canary in the coal mine for this process.
REDI Reports
- February 2024
- Amy Greenwell, Andrew Seidl, Cole Crossett, Drew Bennett, Michael Menefee
- Conservation, Conservation Easements, Tax
- Colorado has invested substantially in voluntary adoption of conservation easements. One of the state’s principal efforts, the Conservation Easement Tax Credit program, includes about 2.3 million acres (3.4%) of Colorado’s lands.
- January 2024
- Anita Alves Pena, Jonathan Cable, Martha Sullins, Dawn Thilmany
- Agriculture, Farmers, Labor
- Approximately 98% of Coloradans surveyed agreed that Colorado’s food and ag industry is important to the state’s future economic development.
- Over 75% feel that it is very or somewhat important that farm/ranch labor is treated fairly in terms of pay and working conditions when making food purchasing decisions.
- November 2023
- Matt Burkard, Rebecca Hill
- Recreation
- River-based recreation on the Yampa River contributes $70,373.68 in estimated output to Craig, CO.
- A proposed 660-acre public land acquisition would provide an additional $109,497.02 in output.
- October 2023
- Ray Miller, Stephan Weiler, Tim Komarek
- Community, Education, Technical Assistance
- REDI and its partners were awarded a $750,000 grant to support economic development in Colorado
- The grant will establish an EDA University Center (UC) at Colorado State University (CSU).
- September 2023
- Ang Li, Stephan Weiler, Willie Wilkins
- Tourism
- Based on a 1% tax rate, a tourism support fee can potentially generate over $1million in annual tax revenue.
- To foster economic diversification, we recommend that Clear Creek County establish a loan fund from a tourism support fee to encourage entrepreneurship.
- August 2023
- Daniel Mooney, Rebecca Hill
- Hemp
- Nationally, hemp land area remains less than 15% of 2019 peak Despite this decreasing trend, the share intended for fiber production increased in 2021–22.
- July 2023
- Alexandra Bernasek, Keelin Jakel, Nathan Rogers, Niroj Bhattarai
- Banking, Jobs, Labor
- This research focuses on small businesses in Fort Collins, CO that received loans through the PPP.
- We find that non-bank lenders (LLCs and credit unions) were an important source of loans, especially for the “smallest” businesses (those with 5 or fewer employees) that received loans at later stages of the loan disbursement process.
- June 2023
- Cindy Vo, Ellery Osborne, Zachary Schaller
- Labor, Unions
- Union elections per worker were surprisingly high in rural areas during the 1960s and 1970s; the decline of unions was much more rural in nature than previously assumed
- In rural areas, sectoral employment shifts were only minorly more impactful than in the nation as a whole.
- May 2023
- Tim Komarek
- Debt, Federal Spending
- This report highlights the relative importance of federal procurement spending in the private sector across different regions of Colorado.
- Several Colorado counties receive a significant amount (over $3,000 per capita a year) of federal spending.
- April 2023
- Benjamin Ghasemi, Dana L. Hoag, Jesse Burkhardt, Robin Young
- Wolves
- In 2020, Coloradans narrowly voted, 51-49%, to reintroduce wolves in late
- We estimate that the benefits to yes-voters are about $115 million/year, likely more than 50 times government spending for those that will experience losses.
- March 2023
- Joanna Mosley
- Demographics
- The demographic diversity of El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs, Pikes Peak, and a variety of Air Force operations is rapidly changing.
- February 2023
- Marco Costanigro, Nathan Palardy
- Alcohol, Beer, Rural Development, Urban
- The introduction of alcohol into grocery and convenience stores in Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas causes a substantial (2.9%-6.8%) decline in statewide monthly liquor store visitation.
- January 2023
- Henry Williams
- Renewable Energy
- S. CO2 equivalent emissions must be reduced 51% by 2030 to remain consistent with the IPCC target of limiting warming to 1.5° Celsius
- In 2019, Colorado legislated targets of reducing emissions “26% by 2025, 50% by 2030, and 90% by 2050 from 2005 levels”
- Electricity generation accounts for roughly 25% of Colorado emissions, and the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard legislation is targeting an 80% reduction in emissions from electric power by 2030 and 95% by 2050
- December 2022
- Daniel Mooney, Martha Sullins, Seon Hyen Kim, Dawn Thilmany
- Agriculture, Community, Cooperatives
- A cooperative is a business that is owned and controlled by the people who use its
- In 2020, there were 25 farm cooperatives headquartered in Colorado with 20,000+ Many other types of coops also exist that serve the agricultural, farm, and food communities
- Cooperatives represent an important form of business organization in Colorado, both in terms of number of members and net business volumes.
- November 2022
- Rachel Driscoll
- Health Care, Maternal
- In Colorado, around 40% of counties are maternal health care deserts, which are counties without a birth center, hospital offering obstetric care, or any obstetric care providers.
- October 2022
- Alessandro Bonanno, Marco Costanigro, Siwei Gao
- Alcohol, Beer
- Policy changes have reshaped the Colorado alcohol retail Starting in January 2019, licensed retailers could sell full-strength beer. The number of retail liquor licenses held by a single entity is set to increase over time.
- September 2022
- Alejandro Giménez-Santana, Alexis R. Kennedy, Leslie W. Kennedy
- Food Deserts
- In Newark, NJ, food deserts, or low access to food, negatively impact the health and wellbeing of community members.
- Individuals who frequent at-risk bodegas to get food have increased risks of becoming victims of aggravated assault.
- August 2022
- Gregory R. Miller
- Commuting
- Using Census Bureau’s LODES data, local governments and communities can better understand commuting patterns since 2002.
- Exploring different levels of geography exhibit interesting commuting
- Fort Collins and Larimer County provide an interesting case to illustrate several measures and visualizations of commuting dynamics
- July 2022
- Nicholas Kacher
- Housing, REDI Report
- This report highlights regional variation in median Loan-to-Value (LTV) ratio, a key indicator of housing affordability volatility.
- Colorado’s median LTV ratio is below the national average, and has fallen since
- In Colorado and the US, Black and Hispanic buyers have substantially higher median LTV ratios than White and Asian buyers.
- June 2022
- Gregory R. Miller, Kendall Stephenson, Ryan DeFilippi
- Housing
- Housing accessibility for all socio-economic groups is a prime goal of any
- Colorado’s Fort Collins was once affordable to many, but now workers in most of the lower-paid occupations can no longer afford to live where they work.
- February 2021
- Austin Landini, Nicholas Kacher
- Gender, Nonemployer, REDI Report
- In 2017, ¾ of all US businesses were nonemployers. 41% of nonemployer establishments were female-led, and female-led ventures accounted for 24% of total nonemployer revenues.
- April 2021
- Jaren Seid, Niroj Bhattarai
- Education, Gender, Inequality, PAC, REDI Report
- To examine COVID-19’s effect on student completion and whether there were differences between genders and between older students and traditional students, we analyze student performance data from courses offered in spring 2020 and spring 2019 from multiple campuses in Northern Colorado.
- June 2021
- Kendall Stephenson
- COVID, Labor, REDI Report, Unemployment
• Data from the US Department of Labor provide a useful historical look at a number of important components of state unemployment insurance programs, including average benefit levels, tax rates, number of exhaustions, and recipiency rates.…
- August 2021
- Adrian Card, Alexandra E. Hill
- Inequality, Labor, REDI Report
• The majority of Colorado farmers and ranchers surveyed reported being able to obtain all the workers they needed in the last five years (78%), depicting a stark contrast from a 2019 California Farm Bureau Federation survey in which only 44% of respondents reported the same.…
• The Poverty Action Center (PAC@REDI) is engaged in several ongoing data analyses to answer questions at the forefront of applied economics globally.…
- April 2022
- Hailey Edmondson, MacKenzie Gill, Dawn Thilmany
- COVID, Food Systems, Market Channels, REDI Report
- COVID accelerated the move to online sales platforms for food purchases
- Delivery and curbside pickup of online food purchases have held steady or grown across all market channels during the pandemic
- Adoption of online sales may persist among some buyers, while others will choose to return to stores and restaurants, offering food enterprises more options to market their products
- April 2017
- Nicholas Kacher, Stephan Weiler
- Gig Economy, Nonemployer, REDI Report
- We propose the use of nonemployer establishment data as an approximation of the “gig” economy.
- The Great Recession that began in 2007 made the rise of the gig economy particularly pronounced, as the growth of nonemployer establishments dramatically outpaced traditional employer establishments.
- June 2017
- Nicholas Kacher, Stephan Weiler
- Entrepreneurship, Labor, REDI Report, Startups
- 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.
- August 2017
- Jacob Moore
- Entrepreneurship, Gig Economy, Nonemployer, REDI Report
- We construct a “nonemployer location quotient” to measure the industrial concentration of gig nonemployers in Colorado compared to the country as a whole.