Description: This paper examines how incentives created by management structures and performance measurement systems affect a corporation’s risk management decisions.

Description: Arguably, many of the fundamental contributing factors to the 2008 mortgage crisis involved misdirected incentives and misinformation available to key participants in the housing finance process. The incentives discussed here include those of the mortgage holders, mortgage intermediaries, mortgage providers, securitizers, raters and CEOs and other highly paid staff of those involved. Unless similar incentives are recognized, future public policy decisions will again fail to avoid this system-wide risk. Since I am most familiar with the U.S. situation, my comments will be limited accordingly.