Two pillars of the Tayloe Murphy Center's mission are Knowledge Creation and Knowledge Dissemination.
Knowledge Creation: Generate research that informs best practices in entrepreneurially driven social and economic change.
Knowledge Dissemination: Engage and connect thought-leading scholars and practitioners in the dissemination of best practices and key findings.
Toward these ends, the Tayloe Murphy Center leads research projects that bring together top academics and practitioners in economic development, business, economics and related fields to engage meaningful questions about community development finance, community competitiveness and other topics relevant to our mission.
Current Research Projects
Latinos and Banking in the Commonwealth of Virginia
The Latino community has a substantial and growing presence in Virginia, and a large part of that community does not access traditional financial service providers. This project aims to understand whether this community is underserved in terms of financial services. The project studies the opportunities and challenges the Latino community faces to access financial services and the potential benefits to this group, their communities and the Commonwealth as a whole in providing greater access to services. Read the abstract and download the full report.
Business Plan Evaluation
Finance is a critical ingredient required to turn a good business idea into reality. A large number of businesses rely on external financing, which is based on peer business plan evaluation. This project aims to study the process by which investors evaluate business plans. For this purpose, experimental methods are employed that utilize online visual stimuli.