Financial Sector Compensation and Excess Risk-Taking

This paper surveys the ways that the structure and magnitude of financial sector compensation can generate incentives for excessive risk taking. It also highlights the underlying economic and institutional forces that have underpinned and sustained these pay structures, including aspects of corporate governance in financial institutions, regulatory capture by financial elites, the nature of the labour market for finance professionals and the extended economic boom of the 1990s and 2000s. Th e measures endorsed by the Financial Stability Board and the G20 for sound compensation practices do not go far enough in several areas; a broader set of measures need consideration.