Economic benefit of public banks

Letter to the editor by Deb Figart, published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on March 5, 2021

Vanessa Lowe and Stan Shapiro (“Bring our money home. Philly needs a public bank,” March 2) point to ethical and antidiscriminatory lending practices that a public banking authority would bring to Philadelphia. There are considerable economic benefits, too. The public bank would spur economic recovery and economic opportunity. This month, in a peer-reviewed economics journal, I provided an estimate of the economic impact of a public bank in Philadelphia utilizing regional input-output analysis. This approach is the same one used to calculate the potential gains of a new hospital, a branch campus of a university, or a stadium.

The overall takeaway is that every $1 billion in new lending would yield approximately: $142 million of increased earnings in Philadelphia; 3,171 new jobs in Philadelphia; and $1.50 billion in new metro-area gross product in our region. There will clearly be a positive economic impact from such an institution in our city.