Publications

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September 2019 (Revised December 2022)
Case

Cooking Down a Storm: Changing Culture at Pasta Serafina (A)

By: Susanna Gallani, Francesca Gino and Raffaella Sadun

Plant management at Pasta Serafina, a pasta producer in the south of Italy, is struggling to contain employee absenteeism. While the misbehavior is concentrated in a minority of the workers, its effects impact not only the plant’s performance, but also the climate and... View Details

Keywords: Absenteeism; Moral Hazard; Employees; Behavior; Problems and Challenges; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Employee Relationship Management; Performance Productivity; Decision Making

Article

Behavioral Hazard in Health Insurance

By: Katherine Baicker, Sendhil Mullainathan and Joshua Schwartzstein

A fundamental implication of standard moral hazard models is overuse of low-value medical care because copays are lower than costs. In these models, the demand curve alone can be used to make welfare statements, a fact relied on by much empirical work. There is ample... View Details

Keywords: Insurance; Consumer Behavior; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance Industry

A fundamental implication of standard moral hazard models is overuse of low-value medical care because copays are lower than costs. In these models, the demand curve alone can be used to make welfare statements, a fact relied on by much empirical work. There is... View Details

Research Summary

Behavioral Hazard and Public Policy

By: Joshua R. Schwartzstein

It is well recognized that people overuse low-value medical care due to moral hazard—because copays are lower than costs. Now Professor Schwartzstein has introduced the concept of “behavioral hazard” to explain the opposite: people underuse high-value care because... View Details

Comment

Discussion of 'The Use of Management Control Mechanisms to Mitigate Moral Hazard in the Decision to Outsource'

By: Dennis Campbell

Keywords: Management; Decision Making; Ethics; Job Cuts and Outsourcing

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October 2015
Teaching Note

1996 Welfare Reform in the United States

By: Matthew C. Weinzierl

Keywords: Median Voter Theorem; Moral Hazard; Voting; Ethics

18 Jan 2016
Research & Ideas

Hazard Warning: The Unacceptable Cost of Toxic Workers

is the morally correct path. “To say the rules should never be broken isn’t completely forthright and honest, so this is basically a sophisticated way to capture that,” Minor says. Another factor could be more Machiavellian applicants... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland

01 Dec 2008
News

No Easy Fix for the Financial Crisis

missing.” LIGHT: This is a time that we're going to be teaching about for years to come. The Risk of Moral Hazard HBS professor David Moss brought a historian’s perspective to the discussion of the nation’s... View Details

Keywords: Roger Thompson;Martha Lagace; deregulation; moral hazard; the middle class; Finance

June 2015
Case

1996 Welfare Reform in the United States

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Katrina Flanagan and Alastair Su

On August 22, 1996, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)—a dramatic reform of the American system of economic assistance for the poor that, as its title suggested, attempted to... View Details

Keywords: Welfare State; Public Goods; Moral Hazard; Median Voter Theorem; Poverty; Welfare; Public Administration Industry; United States

2021
Article

To Thine Own Self Be True? Incentive Problems in Personalized Law

By: Jordan M. Barry, John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers

Recent years have seen an explosion of scholarship on “personalized law.” Commentators foresee a world in which regulators armed with big data and machine learning techniques determine the optimal legal rule for every regulated party, then instantaneously disseminate... View Details

Keywords: Personalized Law; Regulation; Regulatory Avoidance; Regulatory Arbitrage; Law And Economics; Law And Technology; Law And Artificial Intelligence; Futurism; Moral Hazard; Elicitation; Signaling; Privacy; Law; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Information Technology; AI and Machine Learning

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June 1997 (Revised November 1998)
Case

Sky Air, Inc.

By: Paul A. Gompers

Concerns a fictitious airline company and examines the moral hazard situation that results within a firm. Provides an opportunity to discuss corporate governance and contracting under uncertainty. View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Corporate Governance; Contracts; Risk and Uncertainty; Air Transportation Industry

Article

The Role of Lockups in Initial Public Offerings

By: Alon Brav and Paul A. Gompers

In a sample of 2,794 initial public offerings (IPOs), we test three potential explanations for the existence of IPO lockups: lockups serve as (i) a signal of firm quality, (ii) a commitment device to alleviate moral hazard problems, or (iii) a mechanism for... View Details

Keywords: Initial Public Offering; Quality; Moral Sensibility; Compensation and Benefits; Venture Capital; Problems and Challenges; Stock Shares; Going Public

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September 2001
Background Note

Financial Reporting Environment, The

By: Paul M. Healy, Amy P. Hutton, Robert S. Kaplan and Krishna G. Palepu

Provides a framework for understanding the role of financial reporting and various intermediaries as mechanisms for reducing both adverse selection and moral hazard problems in capital markets. Financial reports reduce adverse selection by providing basic information... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Capital Markets; Venture Capital; Corporate Disclosure; Conflict of Interests