Thanks for this—really interesting post! A quick point on the moral hazard worry. I think there is a confusion in many moral hazard arguments between (1) “this intervention would increase risky behaviour”, and (2) “this intervention would increase risky behaviour, which would thereby make the net benefits of the intervention too low to be worthwhile or even negative”. (2) is the one we should be worried about—in other places, I have tried to call this a ‘pernicious moral hazard’ to distinguish it from (1) as it is easy to move to quickly from showing that there is a moral hazard to showing that the intervention is a bad idea.
While it is possible that widespread use of N-95 masks would increase risky behaviour, it also seems very unlikely to make the net benefits of the intervention not worthwhile. I have looked at several real world examples of moral hazards and struggled to find a case where the moral hazard effects made the intervention not worthwhile. (One possible exception is improvements in the quality of american football helmets which enabled people to tackle other players with their head, which led to extra concussions.) It doesn’t seem plausible that what you propose is a pernicious moral hazard
Thanks, John! I really like your distinction between the type (1) and type (2) “pernicious moral hazard.”
Yes I agree that the moral hazard I mention here would not be large enough to outweigh the benefits of the policy, putting it in the category of (1). My goal in that “potential issues” section was to think about the universe of potential issues that people could raise about the policy and address them. As you can tell, I don’t currently think any of the issues are significant enough to make the policy not worth it.
Thanks for this—really interesting post! A quick point on the moral hazard worry. I think there is a confusion in many moral hazard arguments between (1) “this intervention would increase risky behaviour”, and (2) “this intervention would increase risky behaviour, which would thereby make the net benefits of the intervention too low to be worthwhile or even negative”. (2) is the one we should be worried about—in other places, I have tried to call this a ‘pernicious moral hazard’ to distinguish it from (1) as it is easy to move to quickly from showing that there is a moral hazard to showing that the intervention is a bad idea.
While it is possible that widespread use of N-95 masks would increase risky behaviour, it also seems very unlikely to make the net benefits of the intervention not worthwhile. I have looked at several real world examples of moral hazards and struggled to find a case where the moral hazard effects made the intervention not worthwhile. (One possible exception is improvements in the quality of american football helmets which enabled people to tackle other players with their head, which led to extra concussions.) It doesn’t seem plausible that what you propose is a pernicious moral hazard
Thanks, John! I really like your distinction between the type (1) and type (2) “pernicious moral hazard.”
Yes I agree that the moral hazard I mention here would not be large enough to outweigh the benefits of the policy, putting it in the category of (1). My goal in that “potential issues” section was to think about the universe of potential issues that people could raise about the policy and address them. As you can tell, I don’t currently think any of the issues are significant enough to make the policy not worth it.