In light of the current economic crisis, we estimate hazard models of divorce to determine how state and national unemployment rates affect the likelihood of a divorce or separation. With data in the United States over the 1978–2008 period from the 1979 NLSY, we find some evidence indicating that a higher unemployment rate increases the risk of a marriage ending for couples in years 6–10 of mar...

Suppose you are an architect and you have recently completed a challenging project: designing and building a sturdy modern house on a sandy stretch of ground where several previous architects had failed. The shifting ground had cracked their one-piece rigid concrete foundations. You vowed not to repeat their mistakes, so you designed a novel foundational system that avoided the use of concrete ...

To obtain higher yields, farmers may excessively use pesticides when they grow crops (like rice, vegetables, or fruit), causing moral hazard behavior. This paper examines how Chinese farmers’ moral hazard behavior in crop production is influenced by their traditional culture. A semi-parametric logistic model is used to investigate the impact of Chinese traditional culture on farmers’ moral haza...

Actions can be moral or immoral, surely, but can also be prudent or imprudent, rude or polite, sportsmanlike or unsportsmanlike, and so on. The fact that diverse methods of evaluating action exist seems to give rise to a further question: what distinguishes moral evaluation in particular? In this article, my concern is methodological. I argue that any account of the distinctiveness of morality ...

Many recent institutional reforms of the financial system have relied on the introduction of an explicit scheme of Deposit Insurance. This instrument aims at two main targets, contributing to systemic stability and protecting depositors. However it may also affect the interest rate spread in the banking system, which can be viewed as an indicator of market power in this financial segment. This ...

My question, which is central to the business of moral philosophy, is implicitly addressed by many philosophers, yet explicitly addressed by only a few. In this paper I address the question head-on, and propose a qualified affirmative answer. First, however, it is important to be clear about what is meant by 'morality' and 'progress', and what the meaning of 'is' is. My characterizations will n...

Many of the important decisions we make have moral implications. Moral Foundations Theory (Haidt & Joseph, 2004) identifies 5 distinct styles of moral reasoning that may be applied to such decisions. This paper explores how reading text that emphasizes one of these styles might affect our reasoning. After participants read a series of tweets that emphasized the Fairness/Cheating foundation they...

This paper expounds on the importance of identifiabilty of subjective probabilities in agency theory with moral hazard. An application to insurance is examined.