Posted by John Vrooman on Monday, April 8, 2019 in National Football League.

Interview with Charlotte Business Journal.

These are numbers from South Carolina Department of Commerce estimating impact of a Panthers training headquarters being built there. Can you give me your perspective on this?

The simple problem with the superficial politics of pie in the sky promises of regional impact studies is that they usually imply that there is always something to be gained for nothing.

The economic reality with the empty promises of self-promoting impact studies is that the economic gains justifying public subsidy usually accrue to the project developers (and the NFL Panthers in this case) at the expense of the general taxpaying public in one political jurisdiction over another.

When push comes to shove, regional economic multipliers are usually zero-sum (if not negative-sum) at best. If the proposed project really had a positive-sum economic impact of $3.8 billion it would soon be, or would already have been undertaken by the private sector (Carolina Panthers in this case) a long time ago, without the false prioritization and economic redistribution effects of government policy.

jv