Power laws, CEO compensation and inequality

C-Tier
Journal: Economics Letters
Year: 2015
Volume: 126
Issue: C
Pages: 78-80

Authors (4)

Blackwell, Calvin (College of Charleston) Graefe-Anderson, Rachel (not in RePEc) Hefner, Frank (not in RePEc) Vaught, Dyanne (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston)

Score contribution per author:

0.251 = (α=2.01 / 4 authors) × 0.5x C-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We observe that CEO compensation and top incomes in the US have both been increasing rapidly over the last thirty years. We hypothesize that the trends in CEO compensation have been caused by the same economy-wide factors that have contributed to increases in income. We test this hypothesis by using ExecuComp and IRS tax data to estimate power law distributions and compare the behavior of these distributions over time. Using linear regression techniques, we estimate a power law distribution for CEO compensation and individual income. We find that the parameters of income distribution and the distribution of CEO compensation are correlated.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:ecolet:v:126:y:2015:i:c:p:78-80
Journal Field
General
Author Count
4
Added to Database
2026-01-24