Some students in my EC470 class may be interested in this paper.
Abstract
We study how monitoring, expert skill and consumer awareness affect the level of misconduct in markets with asymmetric information and price-taking experts. Theoretical predictions show that experts subject to more intense monitoring may be less ethical in equilibrium. Similarly, more experienced experts are predicted to exhibit greater levels of misconduct. We test these predictions in the insurance sales industry and find that monitored experts are 21 to 98% more likely to take advantage of customers, relative to unmonitored experts. We also find empirical evidence that more experienced experts are significantly more likely to mislead their customers.