Moral Hazard (moral + hazard)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting

Terms modified by Moral Hazard

  • moral hazard problem

  • Selected Abstracts


    MORAL HAZARD AND LABOUR-MANAGED FIRMS IN ITALY AFTER THE LAW N. 142/2001

    ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2008
    Francesco REITO
    ABSTRACT,:,Instead of focusing on the difference between a labour-managed (LMF) and a profit maximizing firm (PMF) in terms of final out-come and occupation, this paper considers the actual possibility for a firm to be financed from outside. A simple case of moral hazard in the credit market is analyzed. A bank, for limited funds, can finance one of two potential firms, a LMF or a PMF, both with similar project size. The Italian case is taken into account: the law n. 142/2001 has equalized the position of workers and members of a LMF as (own) firm creditors during a liquidation. This has an effect on the structure of creditors priorities in case a firm goes bankrupt and, in particular, on money-lenders likelihood of getting their loans back. It is argued that, before the law, the LMF had in general an advantage on the PMF, from banks viewpoint, for it faced a lower moral hazard problem on effort contribution. After the law, even though the direct consequence seems to be a draw back in LMF credit-worthiness, the model shows that, on given conditions, this type of firm remains more competitive as a bank borrower. [source]


    Accounting Recognition, Moral Hazard, and Communication,

    CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 3 2000
    PIERRE JINGHONG LIANG
    Abstract Two complementary sources of information are studied in a multiperiod agency model. One is an accounting source that partially but credibly conveys the agent's private information through accounting recognition. The other is an unverified communication by the agent (i.e., a self-report). In a simple setting with no communication, alternative labor market frictions lead to alternative optimal recognition policies. When the agent is allowed to communicate his or her private information, accounting signals serve as a veracity check on the agent's self-report. Finally, such communication sometimes makes delaying the recognition optimal. We see contracting and confirmatory roles of accounting as its comparative advantage. As a source of information, accounting is valuable because accounting reports are credible, comprehensive, and subject to careful and professional judgement. While other information sources may be more timely in providing valuation information about an entity, audited accounting information, when used in explicit or implicit contracts, ensures the accuracy of the reports from nonaccounting sources. [source]


    International Financial Rescues and Debtor-Country Moral Hazard,

    INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 3 2004
    Prasanna Gai
    This paper examines whether recent international policy initiatives to facilitate financial rescues in emerging market countries have influenced debtors' incentives to access official sector resources. The paper highlights a country's systemic importance as a key characteristic that drives access to official sector finance. It estimates the effect of these financial rescue initiatives on IMF programme participation using a pooled probit model. The safety net permitting exceptional access is shown to have a greater marginal impact on official sector resource usage, the more systemically important the debtor country. The results can be interpreted as offering some support for the presence of debtor-country moral hazard. [source]


    Identifying the Role of Moral Hazard in International Financial Markets

    INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 1 2004
    Steven B. Kamin
    Abstract Considerable attention has been paid to the possibility that large-scale IMF-led financing packages may have distorted incentives in international financial markets, leading private investors to provide more credit to emerging market countries, and at lower interest rates, than might otherwise have been the case. Yet, prior attempts to identify such distortions have yielded mixed evidence, at best. This paper makes three contributions to our ability to assess the empirical importance of moral hazard in international financial markets. First, it is argued that, because large international ,bail-outs' did not commence until the 1995 Mexican crisis, financial indicators prior to that time could not have reflected a significant degree of this type of moral hazard. Therefore, one test for the existence of moral hazard is that the access of emerging markets to international credit is significantly easier than it was prior to 1995. Second, the paper argues that because private investors expect large-scale IMF-led packages to be extended primarily to economically or geo-politically important countries, moral hazard, if it exists, should lead these countries to have easier terms of access to credit than smaller, non-systemically important countries. Finally, in addition to looking at bond spreads, the focus of earlier empirical analyses of moral hazard, the paper also examines trends in capital flows to gauge the access of emerging market countries to external finance. Looking at the evidence in light of these considerations, the paper concludes that there is little support for the view that moral hazard is significantly distorting international capital markets at the present time. [source]


    Health Insurance, Moral Hazard, and Managed Care

    JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, Issue 1 2002
    Ching-To Albert Ma
    If an illness is not contractible, then even partially insured consumers demand treatment for it when the benefit is less than the cost, a condition known as moral hazard. Traditional health insurance, which controls moral hazard with copayments (demand management), can result in either a deficient or an excessive provision of treatment relative to ideal insurance. In particular, treatment for a low-probability illness is deficient if illness per se has little effect on the consumer's marginal utility of income and if the consumer's price elasticity of expected demand for treatment is large relative to the risk-spreading distortion when these are evaluated at a copayment that brings forth the ideal provision of treatment. Managed care, which controls moral hazard with physician incentives, can either increase or decrease treatment delivery relative to traditional insurance, depending on whether demand management results in deficient or excessive treatment. [source]


    An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Increasing Deductibles on Moral Hazard

    JOURNAL OF RISK AND INSURANCE, Issue 3 2008
    Jennifer L. Wang
    Using information on timing and number of claims in a unique data set pertaining to comprehensive automobile insurance with the increasing deductible provision in Taiwan, the authors provide new evidence for moral hazard. Time-varying correlations between the choice of the insurance coverage and claim occurrence are significantly positive and exhibit a smirk pattern across policy months. This empirical finding supports the existence of asymmetric information. A subsample estimation depicts insured drivers' significant responses to increasing deductibles, which implies the existence of moral hazard. According to the probit regression results, the increasing deductible makes policyholders who have ever filed claims less likely to file additional claims later in the policy year. The empirical findings strongly support the notion that the increasing deductible provision helps control moral hazard. [source]


    Moral Hazard in Reinsurance Markets

    JOURNAL OF RISK AND INSURANCE, Issue 3 2005
    Neil Doherty
    This article attempts to identify moral hazard in the traditional reinsurance market. We build a multiperiod principal,agent model of the reinsurance transaction from which we derive predictions on premium design, monitoring, loss control, and insurer risk retention. We then use panel data on U.S. property liability reinsurance to test the model. The empirical results are consistent with the model's predictions. In particular, we find evidence for the use of loss-sensitive premiums when the insurer and reinsurer are not affiliates (i.e., not part of the same financial group), but little or no use of monitoring. In contrast, we find evidence for the extensive use of monitoring when the insurer and reinsurer are affiliates, where monitoring costs are lower. [source]


    Overcompensation as a Partial Solution to Commitment and Renegotiation Problems: The Case of Ex Post Moral Hazard

    JOURNAL OF RISK AND INSURANCE, Issue 4 2004
    M. Martin Boyer
    In a Costly State Verification world, an agent who has private information regarding the state of the world must report what state occurred to a principal, who can verify the state at a cost. An agent then has what is called ex post moral hazard: he has an incentive to misreport the true state to extract rents from the principal. Assuming the principal cannot commit to an auditing strategy, the optimal contract is such that: (1) the agent's expected marginal utility when there is an accident (high- and low-loss states) is equal to his marginal utility when there is no accident; (2) the lower loss is undercompensated, while the higher loss is overcompensated; and (3) the welfare of the agent is greater under commitment than under no-commitment. Result 2 is contrary to the results obtained if the principal can commit to an auditing strategy (higher losses underpaid and lower losses overpaid). The reason is that by increasing the difference between the high and the low indemnity payments, the probability of fraud is reduced. [source]


    Co-ordination Failure, Moral Hazard and Sovereign Bankruptcy Procedures*

    THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 487 2003
    Sayantan Ghosal
    We study a model of sovereign debt crisis that combines problems of creditor co-ordination and debtor moral hazard. In the face of sovereign default, the need to give appropriate incentives to the debtor leads to excessive ,rollover failure' by creditors. We discuss how the incidence of crises might be reduced by international sovereign bankruptcy procedures , involving increased ,contractibility' of sovereign debtor's payoffs, suspension of convertibility in a ,discovery' phase and penalties in case of malfeasance. In relation to the current debate, this is more akin to the IMF's Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism than the Collective Action Clauses promoted by others. [source]


    Moral Hazard and Other-Regarding Preferences

    THE JAPANESE ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2004
    Hideshi Itoh
    The paper aims at obtaining new theoretical insights by combining the standard moral hazard models of principal,agent relationships with theories of other-regarding preferences, in particular inequity aversion theory. The principal is in general worse off, as the agent cares more about the wellbeing of the principal. When there are multiple symmetric agents who care about each other's wellbeing, the principal can optimally exploit their other-regarding nature by designing an appropriate interdependent contract such as a "fair" team contract or a relative performance contract. The approach taken in this paper can shed light on issues on endogenous preferences within organizations. [source]


    Moral Hazard and Optimal Subsidiary Structure for Financial Institutions

    THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 6 2004
    CHARLES KAHN
    ABSTRACT Banks and related financial institutions often have two separate subsidiaries that make loans of similar type but differing risk, for example, a bank and a finance company, or a "good bank/bad bank" structure. Such "bipartite" structures may prevent risk shifting, in which banks misuse their flexibility in choosing and monitoring loans to exploit their debt holders. By "insulating" safer loans from riskier loans, a bipartite structure reduces risk-shifting incentives in the safer subsidiary. Bipartite structures are more likely to dominate unitary structures as the downside from riskier loans is higher or as expected profits from the efficient loan mix are lower. [source]


    Export Credit Guarantees, Moral Hazard and Exports Quality

    BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, Issue 4 2004
    María del Carmen García-Alonso
    F12; H56; L10 Abstract We analyse the role played by export credit guarantees (ECGs) in encouraging exports to developing countries. The existence of moral hazard on the side of the firm is introduced. We show that the inability of the exporter's government to verify the actual quality of the product will limit its ability to encourage trade through ECGs, once the coverage provided goes beyond a certain threshold. This result provides a rationale behind the limited coverage on ECGs. [source]


    Principal-Agent Problems in Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazards, Adverse Selection, and the Commitment Dilemma

    INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2009
    Robert W. Rauchhaus
    A number of recent studies have concluded that humanitarian intervention can produce unintended consequences that reduce or completely undermine conflict management efforts. Some analysts have argued that the incentive structure produced by third parties is a form of moral hazard. This paper evaluates the utility of moral hazard theory and a second type of principal-agent problem known as adverse selection. Whereas moral hazards occur when an insured party has an opportunity to take hidden action once a contract is in effect, adverse selection is the result of asymmetric information prior to entering into a contract. Failing to distinguish between these two types of principal-agent problems may lead to policy advice that is irrelevant or potentially harmful. Along with introducing the concept of adverse selection to the debate on humanitarian intervention, this study identifies a commitment dilemma that explains why third parties operating in weakly institutionalized environments may be unable to punish groups that take advantage of intervention. [source]


    Social Insurance with Risk-Reducing Investments

    ECONOMICA, Issue 265 2000
    Dan Anderberg
    A two-sector model with sector-dependent disability risks is presented. Working in the low-risk sector requires skills that can be obtained by investments in education. Moral hazard precludes full insurance. The labour force allocation is responsive to the incentives created by a social insurance system. The rationale for intervention lies in the government's power to cross-subsidize between the sectors, and it is demonstrated how the responsiveness of the labour force allocation limits cross-subsidization. The second-best policy is time-inconsistent. The consistent equilibrium is explored and is argued to provide weak incentives to reduce risks. [source]


    Analysing UDROP: An Instrument for Stabilizing the International Financial Architecture

    INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 1 2001
    Axel LindnerArticle first published online: 16 DEC 200
    This paper analyses implications of a proposal, called UDROP, to reform the standards of international debt contracts. The idea is to give borrowers a roll-over option at maturity for a specified length of time. Using recently developed models of financial crises, the paper shows for which type of crisis UDROP is beneficial. Moral hazard of the borrower is one of the problems UDROP faces which can be addressed by appropriately designing the debt contract. [source]


    COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT ON THE INDIGENOUS ESTATE: A PROFIT-RELATED INVESTMENT PROPOSAL

    ECONOMIC PAPERS: A JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMICS AND POLICY, Issue 3 2005
    Jon Altman
    This article assesses the state of commercial development and resource management on Indigenous land in remote Australia. Indigenous landowners control significant assets,over one million square kilometres of land,often with substantial resource rights and income earning potential. The inactivity and missed opportunities on the Indigenous estate are of such magnitude as to represent a major risk both for Indigenous landowning communities, in terms of their future economic and social well-being, and for national and international interests in terms of ecological vulnerability. The article explores the role of government as risk manager in such circumstances and outlines the principles that might underpin any intervention program targeted to the commercial development of Indigenous land. Using the analytical framework for profit-related loans and elements of an existing venture capital support programme, the Innovation Investment Fund Program, we outline the hypothetical skeleton of a new investment scheme to assist development and natural resource management on the Indigenous estate. Our proposal can be conceptualised as a profit-related loan scheme or as a form of capped public investment. It seeks to address key elements of the market failure that exists in relation to financing development on remote Indigenous land, provides incentives for greater private sector investment, and ensures that commercial and social risks are shared equitably between government, private sector investors and Indigenous-owned corporations to avoid problems of adverse selection and moral hazard. [source]


    Internal Capital Markets and Capital Structure: Bank Versus Internal Debt

    EUROPEAN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2010
    Nico Dewaelheyns
    G32; G21 Abstract We argue that domestic business groups are able to actively optimise the internal/external debt mix across their subsidiaries. Novel to the literature, we use bi-level data (i.e. data from both individual subsidiary financial statements and consolidated group level financial statements) to model the bank and internal debt concentration of non-financial Belgian private business group affiliates. As a benchmark, we construct a size and industry matched sample of non-group affiliated (stand-alone) companies. We find support for a pecking order of internal debt over bank debt at the subsidiary level which leads to a substantially lower bank debt concentration for group affiliates as compared to stand-alone companies. The internal debt concentration of a subsidiary is mainly driven by the characteristics of the group's internal capital market. The larger its available resources, the more intra-group debt is used while bank debt financing at the subsidiary level decreases. However, as the group's overall debt level mounts, groups increasingly locate bank borrowing in subsidiaries with low costs of external financing (i.e. large subsidiaries with important collateral assets) to limit moral hazard and dissipative costs. Overall, our results are consistent with the existence of a complex group wide optimisation process of financing costs. [source]


    A Game Theoretic Analysis of the Afghan Surge

    FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 3 2010
    Navin A. Bapat
    This paper critically examines the Obama Administration's decision to increase the level of US forces in Afghanistan to combat the Taliban insurgency. Given the complexities of the Afghan situation, and the numerous tradeoffs associated with any US response, I turn to the a game theoretic model to capture the essence of the Administration's decision. Using the model, I argue that while the "Afghan surge" temporarily increases the probability that the Taliban will accede to Hamid Karzai's government, the surge produces a problem of moral hazard. Specifically, because Karzai recognizes that negotiation will allow the Obama Administration to exit the conflict, he has no incentive to make peace with the Taliban. Despite this, the model demonstrates that the political price Obama will pay for disengagement may deter the Administration from exiting Afghanistan, thereby giving Karzai to continue fighting the war at the expense of the United States. I conclude by using these insights to draw several policy implications for the US operation in Afghanistan. [source]


    Knowledge transfer in project reviews: the effect of self-justification bias and moral hazard

    ACCOUNTING & FINANCE, Issue 1 2009
    Mandy M. Cheng
    M40 Abstract In this study, we examine two factors that impact managers' willingness to share private information during the project review stage of capital budgeting. Drawing on the cognitive dissonance theory and the agency theory, we find that both high perceived personal responsibility and the use of project reviews for performance evaluation result in a greater tendency for managers to withhold negative private information. However, we do not find an interaction between these two factors. Our study makes a contribution to both the academic literature investigating factors affecting project reviews and the practitioner literature looking at design and implementation of effective project reviews. [source]


    EQUILIBRIUM LENDING MECHANISM AND AGGREGATE ACTIVITY,

    INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2010
    Cheng Wang
    We construct a model of the credit market where financial contracting is subject to costly state verification and moral hazard. The economy's aggregate activity and its equilibrium lending mechanism are determined jointly. We analyze how changes in the model's exogenous variables, including the returns of the economy's investment projects and the supply of loans, affect the economy's aggregate output and the types of the credit through which investment is funded. [source]


    Welfare-improving adverse selection in credit markets,

    INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 4 2002
    James Vercammen
    A model of simultaneous adverse selection and moral hazard in a competitive credit market is developed and used to show that aggregate borrower welfare may be higher in the combined case than in the moral-hazard-only case. Adverse selection can be welfare improving because in the pooling equilibrium of the combined model, high-quality borrowers cross subsidize low-quality borrowers. The cross subsidization reduces the overall moral hazard effort effects, and the resulting gain in welfare may more than offset the welfare loss stemming from distorted investment choices. The analysis focuses on pooling equilibria because model structure precludes separating equilibria. [source]


    BANK RUNS: DEPOSIT INSURANCE AND CAPITAL REQUIREMENTS*

    INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2002
    RUSSELL COOPER
    Diamond and Dybvig provide a model of intermediation in which deposit insurance can avoid socially undesirable bank runs. We extend the Diamond,Dybvig model to evaluate the costs and benefits of deposit insurance in the presence of moral hazard by banks and monitoring by depositors. We find that complete deposit insurance alone will not support the first-best outcome: depositors will not have adequate incentives for monitoring and banks will invest in excessively risky projects. However, an additional capital requirement for banks can restore the first-best allocation. [source]


    Voting on Unemployment Insurance

    INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 4 2001
    Stéphane Pallage
    In this article, we ask heterogeneous agents in a dynamic general equilibrium economy to vote on the generosity of their unemployment insurance program. We observe the influence on their vote of (1) moral hazard, (2) private alternatives, and (3) changes in employment status. Agents differ in skills, employment probabilities, income prospects, and assets. For a calibration to the United States, we show that: (1) in contrast to the literature, plausible levels of moral hazard need not induce large cuts in optimal benefits. (2) Switching to private insurance is rejected for most status quo, though it would be as generous. (3) Skill groups vote as a block. For reasonable discount factors, solidarity is never broken simultaneously for more than one group. [source]


    International Financial Rescues and Debtor-Country Moral Hazard,

    INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 3 2004
    Prasanna Gai
    This paper examines whether recent international policy initiatives to facilitate financial rescues in emerging market countries have influenced debtors' incentives to access official sector resources. The paper highlights a country's systemic importance as a key characteristic that drives access to official sector finance. It estimates the effect of these financial rescue initiatives on IMF programme participation using a pooled probit model. The safety net permitting exceptional access is shown to have a greater marginal impact on official sector resource usage, the more systemically important the debtor country. The results can be interpreted as offering some support for the presence of debtor-country moral hazard. [source]


    Identifying the Role of Moral Hazard in International Financial Markets

    INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 1 2004
    Steven B. Kamin
    Abstract Considerable attention has been paid to the possibility that large-scale IMF-led financing packages may have distorted incentives in international financial markets, leading private investors to provide more credit to emerging market countries, and at lower interest rates, than might otherwise have been the case. Yet, prior attempts to identify such distortions have yielded mixed evidence, at best. This paper makes three contributions to our ability to assess the empirical importance of moral hazard in international financial markets. First, it is argued that, because large international ,bail-outs' did not commence until the 1995 Mexican crisis, financial indicators prior to that time could not have reflected a significant degree of this type of moral hazard. Therefore, one test for the existence of moral hazard is that the access of emerging markets to international credit is significantly easier than it was prior to 1995. Second, the paper argues that because private investors expect large-scale IMF-led packages to be extended primarily to economically or geo-politically important countries, moral hazard, if it exists, should lead these countries to have easier terms of access to credit than smaller, non-systemically important countries. Finally, in addition to looking at bond spreads, the focus of earlier empirical analyses of moral hazard, the paper also examines trends in capital flows to gauge the access of emerging market countries to external finance. Looking at the evidence in light of these considerations, the paper concludes that there is little support for the view that moral hazard is significantly distorting international capital markets at the present time. [source]


    A case of constitutional apples and oranges: a functional comparison of pension priority and benefit guarantees in U.S., U.K. and Canadian insolvency and pension law regimes

    INTERNATIONAL INSOLVENCY REVIEW, Issue 2 2009
    Ronald B. Davis
    Canada's insolvency law reform increased the priority granted to employer-sponsored pension claims. The article compares the treatment of such claims in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada. A comparison of the legislative provisions concerning pension funding shortfalls from contribution arrears or economic underperformance in relation to the assumptions used for investment income or liability valuations finds that insolvency law has been used to address contribution arrears, but risks from economic underperformance have been addressed by pension benefit insurance. Post-insolvency priority for contribution arrears provides appropriate incentives to discourage pre-insolvency preferences for payments to other creditors, while shortfalls from economic underperformance do not involve issues of preference between creditors. The absence of any insolvency rationale for changing priority for shortfalls from economic underperformance and the likely disparity between the assets available to satisfy clams and the much larger amounts of such shortfalls makes the use of insolvency law to address this risk much less effective than insurance. Canada, however, has not adopted the insurance policy instrument used in the U.S. and U.K. to mitigate the impact of pension funding shortfalls. The constitutional inability of Canada to legislate in respect of matters of pension regulation that would allow it to control the well-known insurance problems of moral hazard and adverse selection may explain why it has only chosen to adopt an insolvency policy instrument. However, a change in priorities in insolvency may generate incentives for secured creditors that either undermine or reinforce this policy choice. Secured creditors could attempt to circumvent the new priority scheme through private arrangements with the debtor or to increase their monitoring activities to ensure the debtor is current in its pension contributions. Secured creditors choices will be influenced by the bankruptcy courts' interpretation of the preference provisions in the insolvency legislation. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


    The efficient resolution of capital account crises: how to avoid moral hazard

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FINANCE & ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2005
    Gregor Irwin
    Abstract This paper presents a model of capital account crises and uses it to study resolution mechanisms for both liquidity and solvency crises. It shows that liquidity crises should be dealt with by a standstill combined with IMF lending into arrears, whereas solvency crises should be resolved by debt write-downs. Dealing with solvency crises by lending would require a subsidy and this creates moral hazard, such as incentives for excessive borrowing, for too little equity financing and for investment in projects that are inefficient. The analysis underlines the importance of accurately assessing whether a crisis is rooted in a liquidity or a solvency problem. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


    Reforming health insurance: A question of principles?

    INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 2 2000
    David M. Dror
    Most industrialized countries have financed health services through health insurance. Two systems prevail: private, or public (social) health insurance. The theoretical differences between them are reviewed. It is argued that most health systems are, however, hybrids and that health insurance reform in Europe and the United States has accentuated this trend because the principles distinguishing the two systems have often been ignored. This is illustrated through the evolution of voluntary vs. compulsory affiliation, coping with moral hazard, and provider regulation. [source]


    The Role and Design of Income-Related Housing Allowances

    INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 3 2000
    Peter A. Kemp
    Income-related housing allowance schemes have become a long-term feature of social policy in the advanced welfare states. They are not without disadvantages, however, and a number of countries have recently introduced significant reforms of their systems. The aim of this paper is to examine some key features of, and recent developments in, housing allowance programmes in seven countries. It addresses five main questions: why have income-related housing allowances become so important, what role do they play, what are the essential features of such schemes, how do they tackle concerns about moral hazard, and what are the pressures facing them? [source]


    Principal-Agent Problems in Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazards, Adverse Selection, and the Commitment Dilemma

    INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2009
    Robert W. Rauchhaus
    A number of recent studies have concluded that humanitarian intervention can produce unintended consequences that reduce or completely undermine conflict management efforts. Some analysts have argued that the incentive structure produced by third parties is a form of moral hazard. This paper evaluates the utility of moral hazard theory and a second type of principal-agent problem known as adverse selection. Whereas moral hazards occur when an insured party has an opportunity to take hidden action once a contract is in effect, adverse selection is the result of asymmetric information prior to entering into a contract. Failing to distinguish between these two types of principal-agent problems may lead to policy advice that is irrelevant or potentially harmful. Along with introducing the concept of adverse selection to the debate on humanitarian intervention, this study identifies a commitment dilemma that explains why third parties operating in weakly institutionalized environments may be unable to punish groups that take advantage of intervention. [source]