It would take a projected $3.6 billion to capitalize a state-run bank in Massachusetts, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston report, and the presence of such a bank might not have all the benefits its supporters hope for.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (FRBB) presented its findings Wednesday to a committee charged with studying the feasibility of starting a Massachusetts state bank. The Legislature, led by Senate President Therese Murray, is looking into creating its own bank: Instead of depositing state money in private financial institutions, a depository institution under government control could support local projects and provide access to credit for small businesses, among other things.

Boosters point to the success of North Dakota’s bank, the only other state-run bank in the country. North Dakota’s economy has prospered even during the recession, and local proponents say its state bank has been a contributor to its health.

North Dakota may have a state bank, but it also has newly discovered natural gas reserves, said Yolanda Kodrzycki, director of the FRBB’s New England Public Policy Center. With natural gas much in demand, she added, the latter is probably a bigger help to the state’s economy than the former.

Even the Bank of North Dakota’s president and CEO, Eric Hardmeyer, demurred from saying his institution had a major role in the state’s fiscal health. Kodrzycki quoting him as stating, "To lay the success of the economy at our feet wouldn’t be appropriate."

The bank’s current primary role is to provide credit, Kodrzycki said, and it appears to work well in North Dakota’s financial environment as it makes commercial, housing and agricultural loans, as well as a sizable student-lending portfolio. As a largely rural state dominated by small local banks, the state bank’s collaboration allows those small institutions to make bigger loans than they otherwise could have.

But Massachusetts is a much different place, she cautioned. While about 16 percent of Massachusetts banks have less than $500 million in assets, 46 percent of North Dakota’s banks are in that category. And while small institutions view the bank of North Dakota as a partner, larger institutions such as those doing business here would view it as a competitor.

The Bank of North Dakota is about $4 billion in assets itself – big for North Dakota, she said, but not large by Massachusetts standards. By comparison, she noted that Middlesex Savings Bank, a larger community institution here, is also at roughly $4 billion in assets.

Also, the Bank of North Dakota was capitalized in 1919 by selling $2 million in bonds. Using that number as a baseline and factoring in inflation and the size of Massachusetts, that would necessitate a $3.2 billion capital-raise here.

Overall, Kodrzycki expressed skepticism that a theoretical Bank of Massachusetts would provide much liquidity in times of fiscal crisis. North Dakota was shielded from fiscal disaster during the latest recession – the dominance of small, conservative institutions and other factors helped shield from financial collapse – but even during the Midwest’s financial crisis of the 1980s, the Bank of North Dakota did little to prevent a large-scale crisis.

Government intervention is only necessary to correct a problem, she concluded, and the committee and state government should examine what problem such a bank would be able to fix.

Still, some committee members had additional questions for the FRBB researchers. Century Bank CEO Barry Sloane, in particular, was dissatisfied that the report didn’t go into further detail about the Bank of North Dakota’s loan portfolio, such as how big the loans were, to which entities they lent to, and whether those loans had federal government guarantees on them.

"How do we analyze the value added if we don’t have that data?" he asked.

The commission is made up of government and industry officials, including local bankers, and will hold further meetings and public hearings on the topic throughout the summer. Legislation establishing the feasibility study had requested the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston to do research on the subject.