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Moral hazard

society
Written and fact-checked byThe Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.
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Table of Contents

Moral hazard is the risk one party incurs when it’s dependent on the moral behavior of others. The risk increases when there is no effective way to control that behavior. Moral hazard arises when two or more parties form an agreement or contractual relationship and the arrangement itself provides an incentive for misbehavior by insuring one party against responsibility.

For example, if an employer agrees to pay all misdemeanor moving violations that are incurred when an employee is driving a company car, that agreement creates a moral hazard by giving an employee the freedom to speed or otherwise break the law without fear of any potential consequences.

Moral hazard and the financial crisis

An example of much greater scope occurred in the financial crisis of 2007–09. During that period, many mortgage brokers reaped enormous rewards (i.e., commissions and bonuses) for selling risky subprime mortgages—mortgages having higher interest rates—to people with poor, incomplete, or nonexistent credit histories, packaging those mortgages (along with less risky mortgages) into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), and selling those securities to banks and investors. These mortgage brokers engaged in moral hazard by transferring the risk of default to the banks and investors. When the housing market leveled off and many individuals with subprime mortgages began to default on their payments, entities that invested in these subprime-heavy securities were left to mitigate the consequences of the moral hazard. The situation was depicted in the film The Big Short (2015).

One could argue that some investors—particularly accredited investors representing large institutions such as pensions and endowments—also engaged in moral hazard by assuming that the federal government would offer financial support to their companies in the event that the loans defaulted. This assumption eventually proved to be valid, as the federal government created the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which initiated a $700 billion buyout to keep banks and other financial institutions operating.

Moral hazard in health insurance

Another example of moral hazard involves the health insurance industry. When health care services are covered by insurance, beneficiaries are more likely to utilize those services. This decreases efficiency in health care because it incurs higher costs for the insurance companies who cover those individuals, and there is little evidence to prove that higher utilization of health care actually correlates to better patient health outcomes. Therefore, many health insurance plans implement cost sharing—a system in which patients contribute to payments for health care services. Insurance companies may require beneficiaries to pay a yearly deductible, which is an amount of money that they must pay out of pocket for health services before insurance coverage kicks in. Patients may also be required to pay a fee at the point of service. This type of cost sharing typically consists of copayments, which are a fixed dollar amount, or coinsurance payments, which are a percentage of the cost of service.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Timothy Lake.