Explaining Executive Pay

The pay of corporate leaders has escalated in the last few decades. At the same time the number of research papers on this issue has soared. Despite an impressive research volume, however, many questions concerning executive compensation remain unsolved.


Lukas Hengartner develops broad concepts for managerial power and firm complexity and empirically tests the influence of these concepts on executive compensation for a large sample of Swiss stock-listed companies. As the jobs of some managers are more complex and demanding than others, these CEOs may command a pay premium in the managerial labor market. It has also been argued that top managers have the power to influence their own compensation. The author shows that both firm complexity and managerial power are associated with higher pay levels. This suggests that top managers are paid for the complexity of their job and that more powerful top managers receive pay in excess of the level that would be optimal for shareholders.