A multiperiod, general equilibrium model of the labor market is developed in which risk-averse workers are faced with job-related uncertainty and labor turnover is costly. If a worker is unlucky and suffers a bad job match, he quits and joins another firm, hoping that he will like its work environment more. Because the quality of a job match is unobservable, workers cannot insure against the risk of a bad match. The firm provides implicit insurance against job dissatisfaction, typically by paying workers more than their net marginal products in their early years with the firm and less subsequently. Since the probabilities of the insured-against events (the quit rates over time) are affected by the amount of such insurance provided, this implicit insurance is characterized by moral hazard. Individuals quit when in the absence of insurance they would not. The equilibrium contract balances out efficiency in risk bearing with efficiency in turnover incentives. We show that the equilibrium contract is not (constrained) efficient and indicate why.

We examine a situation in which insurance is characterized by moral hazard. When market insurance is provided, supplementary mutual assistance between family and friends (unobservable to market insurers) will occur. When nonmarket insurers have no better information than market insurers, the mutual assistance not only crowds out market insurance but is also harmful and therefore dysfunctional Alternatively, when nonmarket insurers can observe each other's effort perfectly, mutual assistance is beneficial These results point to the potential importance of peer-monitoring mechanisms in mitigating moral hazard.