Moral Hazard and the Internal Organization of Joint Research

Revised 2006-06

Endogenous Formation of Competing Partnership with Moral Hazard

Published as an article in: Games and Economic Behavior, 2003, vol. 44, issue 1, pages 183-194.

Moral cleansing and moral licenses: experimental evidence

Research on moral cleansing and moral self-licensing has introduced dynamic considerations in the theory of moral behavior. Past bad actions trigger negative feelings that make people more likely to engage in future moral behavior to offset them. Symmetrically, past good deeds favor a positive self-perception that creates licensing effects, leading people to engage in behavior that is less likely to be moral. In short, a deviation from a “normal state of being” is balanced with a subsequent action that compensates the prior behavior. We model the decision of an individual trying to reach the optimal level of moral self-worth over time and show that under certain conditions the optimal sequence of actions follows a regular pattern which combines good and bad actions. We conduct an economic experiment where subjects play a sequence of giving decisions (dictator games) to explore this phenomenon. We find that donation in the previous period affects present decisions and the sign is negative: participants’ behavior in every round is negatively correlated to what they did in the past. Hence donations over time seem to be the result of a regular pattern of self-regulation: moral licensing (being selfish after altruist) and cleansing (altruistic after selfish).

Environmental judgment in early childhood and its relationship with the understanding of the concept of living beings

The evidence collected concerning the biocentric judgment that young children express when evaluating human actions on the environment leads some scholars to suggest that an essential understanding of the notion of living beings should appear earlier than previously believed. This research project aims to study that assumption. To this end, young children’s choice when they are put in situation of having to compare and choose the most negative option between environmentally harmful actions and the breaking of social conventions are examined. Afterwards, the results are categorized in relation to those obtained from the study of children’s grasp of the distinction between living beings and inanimate entities. The data is analysed according to the individuals’ age and overall, it suggests a lack of relationship between environmental judgment and the understanding of the concept of living beings. The final results are discussed in keeping with recent research in the field of moral development that underscores the role that unconscious emotional processing plays in the individual’s normative judgment.

International Support of Climate Change Policies in Developing Countries: Strategic, Moral and Fairness Aspects

33 p.

La ética y el riesgo moral de las entidades financieras

[ES] Actualmente nos econtramos sumergidos en una de las mayores crisis económicas conocidas hasta el momento, la cual ha dado lugar a diversos debates sobre las posibles causas de la misma. Entre ellas, últimamente, han tomado cierta relevancia términos como la ética bancaria y el riesgo moral, los cuales permiten establecer una concordancia entre las actitudes de la banca en los años previos al año 2007 y el estallido de la crisis económica. Es necesario, por tanto, el análisis de casos concretos como Bankia, CAM y BBVA para conocer con exactitud las buenas y malas gestiones desarrolladas por las entidades financieras de nuestro entorno en los citados años. Asimismo, conviene mostrar las consecuencias de aquellas actitudes, como la pérdida de la confianza por parte de la clientela, para determinar las medidas adoptadas con objeto de reconducir el sistema financiero español, lo cual permite evaluar su grado de efectividad.

Sobre el carácter y el objeto de la crítica moral en la sátira 2.5 de Horacio

El presente artículo es una ampliación y reelaboración de la comunicación presentada en el II Encuentro Interdisciplinar sobre Retórica, Texto y Comunicación (Cádiz, 7-10 de diciembre de 1994) titulada: "El valor del diálogo en la sátira de Horacio: el ejemplo de 2.5".