Moral Dimensions of Moral Hazards

Abstract

‘Moral hazard’ is an economic term which commonly refers to situations in which people have a tendency to increase their exposure to risk when the costs of their actions, should they get unlucky, befall someone else. Once insured, for example, a person might have little reason, financially speaking, to be careful if he will get fully reimbursed for his losses should things go wrong, especially if he does not risk an increase in his insurance premium fees. In this article, I argue that moral hazards are not morally neutral. To this end, I distinguish between concepts that (a) call for a moral value judgement but do not have a fixed moral value and (b) those that call for a moral value judgement and also have a fixed moral value. In short, this article examines questions that lie at the intersection of ethics and economics.