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Overview

The Tampa Bay E-Insights report is the result of a challenging research inquiry by faculty and graduate students from the ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵ Muma College of Business. The goal of this initiative was to benchmark Tampa Bay across multiple economic indicators relative to 19 other Metropolitan Statistical Areas and to provide policy recommendations to move the proverbial needle when it comes to Tampa Bay’s positive ranking on different economic indicators. To this end, researchers adopted a data-driven approach because we strongly believe that data-driven insights are key to the accurate decision making and that the resulting analysis could help civic and business leaders to make informed decisions.

Since 2017, ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵresearchers have released four E-Insights reports. The first was a study of economic competitiveness of the Tampa Bay region. Later inquiries expanded the analysis to include inclusive economic growth, the impact of COVID-19 on the economy and racial equity. One salient feature of this analysis is that it uses real-time big data signals such as Google Trends, which tracks search queries and trends, to derive the most recent or current insights. Also, researchers employ rigorous econometric analyses to identify the primary drivers of economic growth, using the results to recommend policy initiatives.

As the nation and the world – inches toward a post-pandemic era, it is crucial to assess how the pandemic has impacted the economy. Researchers identified three domains that experienced change (or impact) due to the pandemic: innovation and entrepreneurship, education, and health care. Researchers evaluated the impact of the pandemic on each of these areas. Additionally, this year, the E-Insights report focuses on the performance of the Tampa Bay region in these three domains of as it relates to the regional economy. The report also presents insights about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these domains. Finally, the report explores the racial equity in terms of access to health care and education by the minority population.