Pay Cuts for the Boss: Executive Compensation in the 1940s / Carola Frydman, Raven Molloy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Frydman, Carola.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Molloy, Raven.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w17303.

NBER working paper series no. w17303

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Pay Cuts for the Boss

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2011.

Summary:

Executive pay fell during the 1940s, marking the last notable decrease in the past 70 years. We study this decline using a new panel dataset on the remuneration of top executives in 246 firms. We find that government regulation--including explicit salary restrictions and taxation--had, at best, a modest effect on executive pay. By contrast, a decline in the returns to firm size and an increase in the power of labor unions contributed greatly to the reduction in executive compensation relative to other workers' earnings from 1940 to 1946. The continued decrease in relative executive pay remains largely unexplained.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2011.