“Bailouts allow investors to keep all the profits in good times without bearing the losses in bad times. Instead, bailouts impose losses on taxpayers, including those most in danger of losing their paychecks,” over 230 leading economists argue in a letter to Congress regarding the $2 trillion package that’s meant to mitigate the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak.

Editor’s note: If you are a professor of Economics, Finance or Law and would like to add your name to this open letter, fill this form (for more information on this initiative, contact professor Jonathan Berk, Stanford University: jonathan.b.berk@gmail.com )

Spending taxpayer money to bail out large corporations is a huge mistake. The money should instead be spent on the people who are most affected.

There are many people who live hand to mouth. Many of them will not be paid if they cannot work. These are the people most affected by the shelter in place orders, and they are the ones the government should be helping.

Large corporations point to their employees as the justification for government relief. Workers in small businesses also need help. We should help affected workers directly.

It does not make sense to count on corporations and their bailed-out investors to act as middlemen and pass on this government relief to those who are truly affected.

When you bail out a large corporation, the people you are actually bailing out are the investors in that corporation.

Bailing investors out is grossly unfair. Investors knew when they made their investments that they would have to weather a storm or two.

The potential to earn high returns when the economy is in good shape compensates them for this risk.

Bailouts allow investors to keep all the profits in good times without bearing the losses in bad times. Instead, bailouts impose losses on taxpayers, including those most in danger of losing their paychecks.

Corporate titans looking for government handouts argue that their industries are vital to the economy, and that without a handout they would “fail.”

Bankruptcy for large corporations does not mean liquidation.

Bankruptcy protects the corporation from creditors and allows it to continue operating. It is possible to keep businesses operating without protecting investors from losses. Leaving no investor behind must not be the government’s objective.

Professor Anat Admati, Stanford University

Professor Stefania Albanesi, University of Pittsburgh

Professor Fernando Anjos, NOVA School of Business and Economics

Professor Ian Appel, Boston College

Professor Yasin Arafat, St. John’s University

Professor Salman Arif, University of Minnesota

Professor Scott Ashworth, University of Chicago

Professor Andrew Atkeson, UCLA

Professor Carlos Avenancio-Leon, Indiana University

Professor Rojhat Avsar, Columbia College – Chicago

Professor Lance Bachmeier, Kansas State University

Professor Swati Bhatt, Princeton University

Professor Todd H. Baker, Columbia University

Professor Tor-Erik Bakke, University of Illinois at Chicago

Professor Giacomo Balbinotto Neto, Universidade Federal Do Rio Grandecdo sul – Ufrgs

Professor Mehrsa Baradaran, UC Irvine School of Law

Professor Amir Barnea, HEC Montréal

Professor Richard Berner, NYU Leonard N. Stern School of Business

Professor Matteo Benetton, University of California Berkeley

Professor Jonathan Berk, Stanford University

Professor Jules van Binsbergen, University of Pennsylvania

Professor Alberto Bisin, New York University

Professor George Bittlingmayer, University of Kansas

Professor Andriy Bodnaruk, University of Illinois at Chicago

Professor Martin Boileau, University of Colorado

Nicole M Boyson, Ph.D., Northeastern University

Professor Alice Bonaime, University of Arizona

Professor David C. Brown, University of Arizona

Professor Greg Buchak, Stanford University

Professor Richard S. Carnell, Fordham University

Professor Cassio Cavalli, FGV Direito São Paulo

Professor Stephen G. Cecchetti, Brandeis International Business School

Professor Latika Chaudhary, Naval Postgraduate School

Professor Hui Chen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Daniel Cohen, Texas A&M

Professor Lin William Cong, Cornell University

Professor Peter Conti-Brown, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Professor John C. Coates, Harvard Law School

Professor J. Anthony Cookson, University of Colorado at Boulder

Professor Jay Cullen, University of York

Professor Da Lin, University of Richmond School of Law

Professor Robert Daines, Stanford University

Professor Peter Dorman, Evergreen State College

Professor Shaun William Davies, University of Colorado – Boulder

Professor Harry DeAngelo, University of Southern California

Professor Bradford DeLong, U.C. Berkeley

Professor George DeMartino, University of Denver

Professor Peter DeMarzo, Stanford University

Professor Andrew L. Detzel, University of Denver

Professor Gerald P. Dwyer, Clemson University

Professor Andrey Ermolov, Fordham University

Professor Isil Erel, Ohio State University

Professor Laura Casares Field, University of Delaware

Professor Andrea Ferrero, University of Oxford

Professor Daniel K. Finn, St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict

Professor Michael Fishman, Northwestern University

Professor Vincy Fon, George Washington University

Professor Gigi Foster, University of New South Wales

Professor Anders Fremstad, Colorado State University

Professor Nicola Fusari, The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

Professor Emily Gallagher, University of Colorado

Professor Mike Gallmeyer, University of Virginia

Professor Rohan Ganduri, Emory University

Professor Lorenzo Garbo, University of Redlands

Professor Matteo Gatti, Rutgers Law School

Professor Anna Gelpern, Georgetown University

Professor Fabio Ghironi, University of Washington

Professor Eric Ghysels, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Professor Alicia Girón, UNAM-MEXICO

Professor Thomas Gilbert, University of Washington

Professor Itay Goldstein, University of Pennsylvania

Professor Alexander Gorbenko, University of Southern California

Professor Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, UC Berkeley

Professor Ilene Grabel, University of Denver

Professor Clinton A. Greene, University of Missouri-St. Louis

Professor Steven Grenadier, Stanford University

Professor Ben Griffy, SUNY, Albany

Professor Daniel Greenwald, MIT

Professor Umit Gurun, University of Texas at Dallas

Professor Valentine Haddad, UCLA

Professor John Hall, Portland State University

Professor Kristine W. Hankins, University of Kentucky

Professor Lars Peter Hansen, University of Chicago, Nobel laureate

Professor John Heaton University of Chicago

Professor Ben Hebert Stanford University

Professor Richard J. Herring, University of Pennsylvania

Professor Christoph Herpfer, Emory University

Professor Claire Hill, University of Minnesota Law School

Professor Robert Hockett, Cornell University

Professor Richard Hornbeck, University of Chicago

Professor Bo Honoré, Princeton University

Professor Jonathan Kalodimos, Oregon State University

Professor Mohsen Javdani, University of British Columbia

Professor Chris Jeffords, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Professor Roger D Johnson, Messiah College

Professor Kathryn Judge, Columbia University

Professor Raja Junankar, UNSW

Professor Farida Khan, University of Colorado Colorado Springs

Professor Dean Karlan Northwestern University

Professor Mahsa Kaviani, Temple University

Professor Donald Keim, University of Pennsylvania

Professor Miles Kimball, University of Colorado, Boulder

Professor Mary C. King, Portland State University

Professor Laurence Kotlikoff, Boston University

Professor Yrjo Koskinen, University of Calgary

Professor Peter Koudijs Stanford University

Professor Arvind Krishnamurthy, Stanford University

Professor Philipp Krueger, University of Geneva and Swiss Finance Institute

Professor Camelia Kuhnen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Professor Pierre Lacour, NYU-SPS

Professor Katja Langenbucher, Goethe University/House of Finance

Professor Eben Lazarus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Ryan Lewis, University of Colorado, Boulder

Professor Victor Lyonnet, Ohio State University

Professor Andrew Lo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Erik Loualiche, University of Minnesota

Professor Deborah Lucas, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Hanno Lustig, Stanford University

Professor Hamed Mahmudi, University of Delaware

Professor Julia D. Mahoney, University of Virginia School of Law

Professor Paul Makdissi, University of Ottawa

Professor Hosein Maleki, Temple University

Professor Nadya Malenko, Boston College

Professor Jordan Martel, Indiana University Bloomington

Professor Ian Martin, London School of Economics

Professor Carlos Brunet Martins-Filho, University of Colorado at Boulder

Professor Keith Maskus, University of Colorado Boulder

Professor David Matsa, Northwestern University

Professor Egor Matveyev, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Gonzalo Maturana, Emory University

Professor W. Ben McCartney, Purdue University

Professor Patricia A. McCoy, Boston College

Professor Robert Merton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nobel laureate

Professor Filippo Mezzanotti, Northwestern University

Professor Atif Mian, Princeton University

Professor Konstantin Milbradt, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Professor Partha Mohanram, University of Toronto

Professor Simon Mongey, University of Chicago

Professor Gary Mongiovi, St John’s University

Professor Nathalie Moyen, University of Colorado

Professor Edward Morey, University of Colorado Boulder

Professor Tracy Mott, University of Denver

Professor Stefan Nagel, University of Chicago

Professor Plamen Nikolov, SUNY, Binghamton

Professor Farzana Noor Bindu, Prairie View A&M University

Professor Saule T. Omarova, Cornell University

Professor Lahcen Oulhaj, Mohammed V University of Rabat

Professor Arzu Ozoguz, UNC

Professor Miguel Palacios, University of Calgary

Professor Ugo Panizza, The Graduate Institute Geneva

Professor Dimitris Papanikolaou, Northwestern University

Professor Jonathan Parker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Paul Pfleiderer, Stanford University

Professor Ludovic Phalippou, Oxford University

Professor Monika Piazzesi, Stanford University

Professor George Pinteris, Ohio State University

Professor Amiyatosh Purnanandam, University of Michigan

Professor Meijun Qian, Australian National University

Professor Mizanur Rahman, University of Dhaka

Professor Tarun Ramadorai, Imperial College London

Professor Robert Reich, University of California at Berkeley

Professor Morgan Ricks, Vanderbilt University

Professor Julio Riutort, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez

Professor Leopoldo Rodriguez, Portland State University

Professor Mark Roe, Harvard University

Professor Nikita Roketskiy, University College London

Professor Giacomo Rondina, UC San Diego

Professor Luis Rosero, Framingham State University

Professor Jesus Salas, Lehigh University

Professor Juliana Salomao, University of Minnesota

Professor Mehrdad Samadi, Southern Methodist University

Professor Razeen Sappideen, Western Sydney University

Professor Paola Sapienza, Northwestern University

Professor Daniel Saros, Valparaiso University

Professor Lukas Schmid, Duke University

Professor Antoinette Schoar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Geoffrey Schneider, Bucknell University

Professor Michael Schwert, University of Pennsylvania

Professor Stephanie Seguino, University of Vermont

Professor Victor de Serière, Radboud University Nijmegen

Professor Amit Seru, Stanford University

Professor William Sharpe, Stanford University, Nobel laureate

Professor Jinfei Sheng, University of California Irvine

Professor Timothy Shields, Chapman University

Professor Tom Shohfi, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | Lally School of Management

Professor Justin Short, Emory University

Professor Stephan Siegel, University of Washington

Professor Stergios Skaperdas,University of California, Irvine

Professor Holger Spamann, Harvard University

Professor Kenneth Singleton, Stanford University

Professor Anup Srivastava, University of Calgary

Professor Lea Stern, University of Washington

Professor Kenneth W. Stikkers, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Professor Ilya Strebulaev, Stanford University

Professor Per Strömberg, Stockholm School of Economics

Professor Amir Sufi, University of Chicago

Professor Kevin Sun, St. John’s University

Professor Jennifer Taub, Western New England University School of Law

Professor David Thesmar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Stathis Tompaidis, University of Texas at Austin

Professor George Triantis, Stanford University

Professor Fred Tung, Boston University School of Law

Professor Selale Tuzel, University of Southern California

Professor Faruk Ulgen, University Grenoble Alpes

Professor Boris Vallee, Harvard Business School

Professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, Columbia University

Professor Laura Veldkamp, Columbia University

Professor Adrien Verdelhan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Aazam Virani, University of Arizona

Professor Angela Walch, St. Mary’s University School of Law

Professor Neng Wang, Columbia University

Professor Wenyu Wang, Indiana University

Professor Ed Van Wesep, University of Colorado, Boulder

Professor Thom Wetzer, University of Oxford

Professor Toni Whited, University of Michigan

Professor Charles K. Wilber, University of Notre Dame

Professor Bonnie Wilson, Saint Louis University

Professor Jon D. Wisman, American University

Professor Timothy A. Wunder, University of Texas at Arlington

Professor Ting Xu, University of Virginia

Professor Liyan Yang, University of Toronto

Professor Zhijun Yang, Metropolitan State University

Professor Tzachi Zach, Ohio State University

Professor Miao Zhang, University of Southern California

Professor David Zalewski, Providence College

Professor Jeffrey S. Zax, University of Colorado Boulder

Professor Stavros Zenios, University of Cyprus

Professor Xingtan Zhang, University of Colorado Boulder

Professor Haoxiang Zhu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago

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