During the 2007-2009 crises financial institutions have come under increasing pressure from regulators, politicians and shareholders to change their compensation practices in order to remove the incentive for short-term excessive risk taking In this paper we analyze how commonly used executive...

During the 2007-2009 crises financial institutions have come under increasing pressure from regulators, politicians and shareholders to change their compensation practices in order to remove the incentive for short term excessive risk taking. In this paper we analyze first how the common...

During the 2007-2009 crises financial institutions have come under increasing pressure from regulators, politicians and shareholders to change their compensation practices in order to remove the incentive for short term excessive risk taking. In this paper we analyze how commonly used executive...

We present an equilibrium model of financial institutions to examine the optimal regulation of risk taking. Shareholders set compensation incentivizing management to increase risk to excessive levels. Regulators use caps on asset risk and compensation to achieve the socially optimal risk level....