If the Tampa Bay area posted its profile on Match.com, how would it fare in attracting suitors?

Especially competing against 49 other bright-looking major metro areas?

Well, brace yourself, but we're not the hottie we might think we are - especially in some categories. But then again, we're not a complete loser, either.

A recent study with the dry-sounding name called "Things Look Different Here: The Economic Importance of Tampa Bay's Distinctiveness," was presented Thursday to about 200 regional business leaders at the Tampa Bay Partnership's annual leadership conference in St. Pete Beach.

Among the positive findings:

- The folks from places like New York and Ohio love to move here, because we're tops in the United States for attracting migrants from northern climes.

- In banking, beaches and the electronics industry, we're leaders.

But then the picture darkens:

- We also spend like relative cheapskates.

- We have the oldest population.

- We're not likely to start up some trendy new company like Starbucks because we're the least entrepreneurial.

- We're so widely dispersed in suburbs we lack a sense of community.

Creative TampaBay, a nonprofit economic development group, commissioned the $40,000 study.

Economist Joseph Cortright mined government data, and marketing and behavior studies to assemble an imperfect, but telling, portrait of the region. To get at distinctiveness, he flagged categories in which the Tampa Bay area veered widely from the national average.

The next steps of the study involve studying the data and assembling smaller workshops to develop a strategy for sustaining the positives and improving the negatives.

The study heralded the region as a winner in one category, but Cortright wasn't sure how it would be received. We came in third in the strip club category. Las Vegas was No. 1, followed unexpectedly by Cincinnati.

"We'll have to do some Cincinnati research," Cortright joked.