Benjamin Hale - What’s so moral about the moral hazard?

Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series
McGill University

Benjamin Hale

What’s so moral about the moral hazard?

Abstract: A ‘moral hazard’ is a market failure most commonly associated with insurance, but also associated by extension with a wide variety of public and environmental policy scenarios, from environmental engineering projects, to wildlife reintroduction efforts, to environmental disaster relief. The term ‘moral hazard’ describes the danger that, in the face of either insurance or some policy intervention, an agent will increase her exposure to risk. If not immediately clear, such terminology invokes a moral notion, suggesting that changing one’s exposure to risk after becoming insured is morally problematic. This paper challenges that position. It argues that there is nothing endogenously moral about the moral hazard. It does so by arguing against three proposed claims regarding the wrongness of the moralhazard: first the view that conceives of it as deception; then the view that conceives of it as cheating; and finally the view that conceives of it as stealing.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007
11:30 a.m.
927 Leacock
Free

Department of Philosophy
McGill University
Leacock Building
855 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 2T7
Tel: (514) 398-6060
Fax: (514) 398-7148