Development Economics Research
Faculty and students in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics are engaged in a variety of research related to development at community, regional, and international scales. There are a number of agricultural and resource allocation issues at the community and regional levels in Colorado, including land use, tax policy, and resource valuation, as well as fiscal impact analysis, industry analysis, and labor market issues. Our international experience involves projects in East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
Community members and stakeholders grapple with serious questions: Can we replace the jobs lost when industry moves? Are we growing too fast? How can we preserve the quality of life that we are accustomed too? Is our community affordable for all of its residents? Community economics frames these questions in an economic context by describing the linkages between economic sectors, chronicling the types of skills and jobs available, facilitating local economic policies to meet local quality of life objectives, and inventorying the available natural, human, financial and capital resources.
Community Economics is often considered a sub-discipline of regional economics as many methods and approaches attempt to adapt regional methods to sub-regional units, including communities. One of the unique opportunities (and challenges) of this sub-discipline involves its data. Locating adequate, dependable and appropriate data to undertake analyses is difficult at such a small scale. As a result, qualitative and quantitative primary data collection methods and stakeholder driven collaborative processes often run parallel to secondary data mining in importance to community economic analysis. Community resource and rural development are closely related fields of inquiry. Principles of welfare economics and project analysis are also essential to the successful practitioner of community, regional and rural economics.
Faculty and Graduate Students of the Department are at the forefront of CSU’s efforts in community, regional and rural economics. Applied research and outreach activities within this focal area include economic base analysis, industry studies/impact analysis, federal, state and local policy and fiscal impact analysis. The principal DARE faculty involved in this area of inquiry are Dr. Steve Davies, Dr. Dawn Thilmany, Dr. James Pritchett and Dr. Andy Seidl. Several of these faculty are affiliates of the Center for Research on the Colorado Economy. Examples of recent work of DARE faculty and graduate students include the economic influence of sugar beets, golf, wine, beef packing plants, Chronic Wasting Disease, skiing, BLM management plans, land use planning alternatives, mountain climbing, lodging taxes, transfer of water rights, and community forestry organizations as well as econometric projections of capital investment expenditures and rural residential development in Colorado and overviews of the role of immigration and Hispanic population growth on the counties of Colorado.
Industry Studies are used to define industries in terms of their
contribution to the economy, with particular attention to market forces
and policies that may be affecting growth, competitiveness or resource
constraints to the industry. The analyses draw from secondary data
collected from government sources, and when applicable, surveys of
industry participants and their customers.
Dr. Dawn Thilmany, Dr. Steve Davies, Dr. Andy Seidl, and Dr. Craig Bond either have examined or are in the process of researching different
industry sectors in the context of relationships with communities, their
economic base and interactions with public lands and other natural
resources. Recent industry partners include the oil and gas, green (ornamental horticulture), dairy, sugar beet, golf, meat packing, wine, aquaculture, and agritourism industries, as well as full industry baselines for a number of Colorado counties.
International agricultural development has been part of our work in the Agricultural and Resource Economics department for many years. In general, we take topics we study domestically into the international arena through contracts and grants and via international graduate students. Over the years, we have worked on a large variety of project internationally: agribusiness projects in Pakistan, Indonesia and Brazil; water issues in Egypt and Pakistan; the value of national parks and other amenities in Costa Rica, Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, and Albania. We also have many international students in our program who usually undertake studies related to their own countries. Recently, these students have worked on topics in Chile, Kenya, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Korea, Nepal, and Vietnam. Historically, CSU had much international water related-research and economic development projects, and, with increased recognition of worldwide shortages in water quantity and also with quality issues, the department is once again looking to move into international projects in this area. We have also worked with the USDA’s Faculty Exchange Program in Russia, Kazakhstan and the Ukraine for over a decade (Armenia, Serbia, Uzbekistan), providing support to Former Soviet Union economics and agricultural economics departments as they learned how to teach courses based on market economics.
Many of the faculty in the department have taken part in international activities. A number of faculty, however, have had the significant background and activity in this area Steve Davies, who has worked on small enterprise development projects in Egypt and Indonesia, agricultural policy and agribusiness activities in Pakistan, and has had numerous international graduate students, quite often as a co-advisor for students from Saudi Arabia is one. Andy Seidl, who works on natural resource based economic development, including tourism, primarily in Latin America and the Caribbean, is another. James Pritchett has begun to adapt his significant background in regional water issues to international dimensions.
Labor market issues related to farmworker trends, immigration policy and Hispanic demographic shifts have significant impacts on the agricultural sector and rural development in Colorado. Using secondary data on the farm labor market, population changes and migration, we assess potential implications of past and proposed farm labor regulations and immigration policies.
Dr. Dawn Thilmany has presented at several national conferences focused on provisions of pending immigration reform proposals, the role of legal and unauthorized farm workers in US agriculture and impacts of immigration on Rural America. She has also worked with Stephan Weiler in the Department of Economics to look at differences in labor market conditions in different areas of Colorado.