This paper departs from the problem awareness that the research funding support and management system in Korea's humanities and social sciences fields has been causing "wasteful and hypocritical research fund usage and management problems" (Kyosu Shinmun, February 18, 2002, Ahn Sang-heon). The reason problems currently arise in research funding support in Korea is that researchers' moral hazard exists under conditions of information asymmetry, and the research funding support system has not been designed with sufficient consideration of researchers' incentives. Through a simple game-theoretic model, this paper demonstrates that under a research support and management system based on actual-cost reimbursement for the input of physical materials, wasteful (causing inefficient waste) and hypocritical (producing illegality and corruption) research fund usage and settlement can occur. The current inefficiency and corruption related to research funding are phenomena that arise as the result of rational individuals' utility-maximizing behavior under the current rules of the game (the equilibrium of the current game). That is, the current problem is an equilibrium in the principal-agent relationship—where the funding agency is the principal and the researcher is the agent—under conditions of information asymmetry and the resulting moral hazard. Based on the analysis of this model, the paper proposes improvement measures grounded in incentive compatibility that can reduce corruption and waste. The proposed measures are improvements appropriate for the knowledge-information society in which the input of intellectual effort—an intangible asset—is the most important factor of production, taking into account researchers' incentive compatibility and administrative costs of management agencies.