Family-owned businesses make up a dominant share of businesses in the United States and are a cornerstone of Las Vegas’ small-business community.

FOR a picture of America’s pre-crisis economy, pay a visit to the south-east corner of Las Vegas. Where the valley begins to rise into the high desert, a Chinese developer has carved the top off a mountain. A wide, empty, road rises into what looks like the remnants of an Inca city. The project, named “Ascaya”, was once America’s biggest excavation site. The idea was to sell the plots to Las Vegas’s elite, whose mansions would enjoy a view over the desert in one direction and the bacchanalia of the Strip ten miles away in the other.

Economic growth in Nevada is accelerating faster than the U.S., economic analysts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Center for Business and Economic Research, said Thursday, but housing remains tight and the state trails woefully in advanced industry.

Economic growth in Nevada is accelerating faster than the U.S., economic analysts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Center for Business and Economic Research, said Thursday, but housing remains tight and the state trails woefully in advanced industry.

Tourism is booming, the population is growing and the economy is heating up — a combination of factors that eventually led to Great Recession in 2007 and 2008.

The job description was brief but specific: A 6-foot-6-inch, 200-pound Italian man with thick, black hair, wearing a “Men In Black”-type suit. It was a temporary position for “an aspiring Las Vegas convention secret service agent,” and it was up for grabs. Demont Daniel had seen plenty of job requests as branch manager of temporary employment agency PrideStaff, but this one topped them all. It was humorous, he said, but Daniel had to reject it because it violated the firm’s equal opportunity employer standards. The company would not get the agent it wanted after all.

Construction, consumer spending and tourism are driving this economy.

Research and analysis firm Applied Analysis has reached a unique public-private agreement with UNLV that gives the university’s professors, researchers and students access to MyResearcher.com, a powerful real-time data analysis tool.

You may not think economic development overseas would ripple in Las Vegas, but it can.

It’s Saturday night at Insert Coin(s). Hundreds of customers flock around the downtown bar’s slot machines and video game consoles.