Hi all,
I’ve trolled this site and others a bit now, I can’t seem to find what I’m looking for other than misc articles here and there. What I’m looking for is a somewhat serious to academic paper, published or not, that discusses possible institutional abuses/protectionist laws that would tend to allow executive pay beyond their productive contribution to their respective companies. For all other topics from public goods to the business cycle it seems there’s more than enough material for arguing for privatization. However in debates on the subject I can’t give more than a vague answer beyond: “They’re paid what people think they’re worth, not including any favorable protections they’ve gotten via lobbying, etc.”
So has there been any research into whether or not corporate executives enjoy a privileged status to some extent that allows their pay to sky rocket while the pay of their workers stagnates and/or declines? Is there some analog to anti trust at their level that gives them more of a managed market to work with that your every day laborer enjoys? I haven’t found anything myself so far on this. I’m not interested in arguments about relative wealth increases or the like, just specifically whether or not there is some protectionism going on at higher level corporate jobs that might allow them to push their salaries up beyond what they would get on the market.