Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how and why language of 'moral hazard' is deployed in undergraduate economics education, to examine certain tensions this illuminates between ethical and other registers in the discipline.

Paper long abstract:

From Weber's The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1920) to Graeber's Bullshit Jobs (2018), sociologists and anthropologists have long considered why people feel they ought to work. In particular, they have focused on the moral aspects of relationships between work and time, as well as the tensions that emerge through the interrelationship of ethical, technical and epistemological orders in timescapes of work (Bear 2016).

This paper explores this dilemma by considering how and why economists themselves turn to a language of 'moral hazard' in undergraduate economics courses. It highlights the specific contexts and sometimes contradictory ways in which this heuristic is deployed, in order to draw out some of the tensions in economics between a) ethical and technical norms, and b) ethical norms and ontological commitments. In particular, it discusses both the convergence and divergence between notions of 'utility' and 'morality' in economics. Morality in the utilitarian traditions of marginalist economics has often been reduced to 'utility', yet turns to 'moral hazard' highlight that the picture is more complex. Some of these complexities are evident in analyses of 'utility' itself, with the paradox of a discipline where it is commonly assumes that work holds 'disutility' also often assumes that people will choose to work more under circumstances which could facilitate them working less, such as increases in pay. This paper will unfold several aspects of this dynamic, as expressed through analyses of how people both can and should act in relation to work.