An Expected-Indemnity Approach to the Measurement of Moral Hazard in Crop Insurance

A definition of moral hazard in multiple peril crop insurance is proposed that focuses on expected indemnities rather than input use. Five years of production and insurance data for a panel of Kansas wheat farms is used to empirically test for this type of moral hazard. Results suggest that moral hazard affects multiple peril crop insurance indemnities in poor production years but that no significant moral hazard occurs in years when growing conditions are favorable. Copyright 1997, Oxford University Press.