cover credit access, job search and retirement, and spending. topics addressed so far in the “ floating ” supplement include the affordable care act, savings from lower gas prices, student loans, family leave, and use of insurance products. together, the core monthly module and the monthly supplement take about fifteen minutes. bis central bankers ’ speeches quarter on various topics. these are up to thirty minutes in length and are separate from the monthly survey. 14 before giving more details about the sce questions and some background on the research underpinning them, i would like to briefly point out two other important design elements of the sce. first, responses are collected using an online survey tool. while it has become harder to obtain nationally representative samples with telephone and mail surveys, for which response rates have been falling, the opposite has been true for online surveys. moreover, some evidence suggests that respondents are more likely to answer financial questions posed in online surveys. in a recent randomized survey experiment conducted by colleagues at the new york fed and the dutch central bank, 15 the share of respondents reporting their inflation expectations in online interviews slightly exceeded the share reporting their expectations in face - to - face interviews. in addition to being more cost effective, online surveys, when fielded at high frequency, provide important flexibility by allowing questions to be added or changed at short notice. it is thus possible to collect information on new economic and financial developments, such as the impact of recent changes in the price of oil. other attractive features of online surveys are the ease of incorporating graphics and other visual refinements and the ease of conducting randomized interactive experiments to analyze the updating of expectations and the links between expectations and behavior. a second key design element of the sce is that it uses a rotating - panel sample design, with approximately 1 / 12 of respondents rotating in each month, after which they stay in the panel for up to 12 months and then rotate out. in addition to keeping the sample representative over time, this rotational structure allows us to track the changes in individuals ’ responses over time. in other words, we can compute changes in expectations over time after differencing out individual idiosyncratic effects. this design contrasts with repeated crosssectional surveys in which an entirely new sample is drawn each month. the panel structure of our survey, with a more stable sample composition, therefore reduces volatility in summary statistics due to a changing sample and increases the signal - to - noise ratio. finally, it is possible to use

s problem. sometimes i worry, however, that this phrase — “ own the risk ” — has become overused and can itself give rise to risk. to be clear, clarity of roles and responsibilities with respect to risk management is critical. business managers should not be able to outsource accountability for risk management to others. still, i wonder if it is time to retire the phrase “ own the risk ” or at least be more thoughtful about its use. if a business manager is told that she “ owns the risk, ” she may feel empowered to ignore or otherwise shut out other key stakeholders and control functions. after all, if she truly owns the risk, then why does she have to listen to anyone else? this is obviously wrong. lawyers and compliance professionals, for example, should be part of an ongoing conversation about risk management. or, conversely, if those lawyers and compliance professionals do not themselves share some stake in the risk, they may not feel that speaking up or challenging a position by the business line is worth it. after all, the business line “ owns the risk ” and they ( the lawyers or compliance officers ) do not. what ’ s more, certain types of risks, in certain types of contexts, do not fit neatly into the “ own the risk ” model. reputational risk is an example. firms often discover, to their dismay, that reputational risk cannot be neatly contained within one business line, or even within one organization. in a sense, it would be better to think of certain types of risks as shared, with shared accountability, rather than owned. in short, it is important to remember that risk management is a means to an end. who “ owns the risk ” is not as important as clearly understanding how that risk may inhibit an organization from fulfilling its purpose or achieving its goals, and clearly understanding how that risk is being managed. that does not mean that responsibility should be unattributed or entirely diffuse. rather, responsibility for risk should not be parsed so finely that employees forget the purpose of managing risk in the first place. understanding the client i promised at the outset that i would talk about the role of lawyers in risk management. first and foremost, lawyers must advise on the law. a colleague of mine likes to say that lawyers must always remember the reason why they are in the room — to advise on the law. to do so, of course, lawyers must know what the law says. 4 / 7 bis central bankers'speeches