IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v175y2022i4d10.1007_s10551-020-04587-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

CEO Pay and the Argument from Peer Comparison

Author

Listed:
  • Joakim Sandberg

    (University of Gothenburg)

  • Alexander Andersson

    (University of Gothenburg)

Abstract

Chief executive officers (CEOs) are typically paid great amounts of money in wages and bonuses by commercial companies. This is sometimes defended with an argument from peer comparison; roughly that “our” CEO has to be paid in accordance with what other CEOs at comparable companies get. At first glance this seems like a poor excuse for morally outrageous pay schemes and, consequently, the argument has been ignored in the previous philosophical literature. In contrast, however, this article provides a partial defence of the argument from peer comparison. Moreover, it is demonstrated how a serious consideration of this argument sheds further light on both incentive- and desert-based theories of just pay.

Suggested Citation

  • Joakim Sandberg & Alexander Andersson, 2022. "CEO Pay and the Argument from Peer Comparison," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 175(4), pages 759-771, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:175:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-020-04587-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-020-04587-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-020-04587-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-020-04587-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kolb, Robert W., 2012. "Too Much Is Not Enough: Incentives in Executive Compensation," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199829583.
    2. Senik, Claudia, 2009. "Direct evidence on income comparisons and their welfare effects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 408-424, October.
    3. Michael Spence, 2002. "Signaling in Retrospect and the Informational Structure of Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(3), pages 434-459, June.
    4. Moriarty, Jeffrey, 2009. "How Much Compensation Can CEOs Permissibly Accept?," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 235-250, April.
    5. Kay,Ira & Van Putten,Steven, 2007. "Myths and Realities of Executive Pay," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521871952, October.
    6. Andrew E. Clark & Paul Frijters & Michael A. Shields, 2008. "Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(1), pages 95-144, March.
    7. Moriarty, Jeffrey, 2005. "Do CEOS get Paid too much?," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(2), pages 257-281, April.
    8. McLeod, Owen, 1996. "Desert and Wages," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(2), pages 205-221, July.
    9. Pamela Kent & Kim Kercher & James Routledge, 2018. "Remuneration committees, shareholder dissent on CEO pay and the CEO pay–performance link," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 58(2), pages 445-475, June.
    10. Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada, 2005. "Income and well-being: an empirical analysis of the comparison income effect," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(5-6), pages 997-1019, June.
    11. Correa, Ricardo & Lel, Ugur, 2016. "Say on pay laws, executive compensation, pay slice, and firm valuation around the world," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 500-520.
    12. Arnold, Denis G. & Bowie, Norman E., 2003. "Sweatshops and Respect for Persons," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(2), pages 221-242, April.
    13. Kershnar, Stephen, 2005. "Giving Capitalists Their Due," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 65-87, April.
    14. Patricia Kotnik & Mustafa Erdem Sakinc & Dejan Guduras, 2018. "Executive compensation in Europe: Realized gains from stock-based pay," Working Papers Series 78, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    15. Olsaretti,Serena, 2004. "Liberty, Desert and the Market," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521836357, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Effnu Subiyanto & Roy Kurniawan, 2022. "Designing fair annual bonus formulations for workers: A case study of the state-owned enterprise cement holding in Indonesia," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-11, December.
    2. Xu, Yong & Ji, Junzhe & Li, Nicolas & Borah, Dhruba, 2024. "How do executive excess compensation affect enterprise technological innovation: Evidence from a panel threshold model of chinese biopharmaceutical companies," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. AndrewE. Clark & Claudia Senik, 2010. "Who Compares to Whom? The Anatomy of Income Comparisons in Europe," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(544), pages 573-594, May.
    2. Thomas Aronsson & Olof Johansson-Stenman, 2014. "When Samuelson Met Veblen Abroad: National and Global Public Good Provision when Social Comparisons Matter," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 81(322), pages 224-243, April.
    3. Alpaslan Akay & Gökhan Karabulut & Peter Martinsson, 2013. "The effect of religiosity and religious festivals on positional concerns -- an experimental investigation of Ramadan," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(27), pages 3914-3921, September.
    4. Hajdu, Tamás & Hajdu, Gábor, 2011. "A hasznosság és a relatív jövedelem kapcsolatának vizsgálata magyar adatok segítségével [Examining the relation of utility and relative income using Hungarian data]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(1), pages 56-73.
    5. Proto, Eugenio & Rustichini, Aldo, 2015. "Life satisfaction, income and personality," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 17-32.
    6. Silvia Maja Melzer & Ruud J. Muffels, 2012. "Migrant's Pursuit of Happiness: The Impact of Adaption, Social Comparison and Relative Deprivation; Evidence from a 'Natural' Experiment," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 448, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    7. Aronsson, Thomas & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2014. "Positional preferences in time and space: Optimal income taxation with dynamic social comparisons," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 1-23.
    8. Benjamin Schalembier, 2016. "The Impact of Exposure to Other Countries on Life Satisfaction: An International Application of the Relative Income Hypothesis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 128(1), pages 221-239, August.
    9. Ricardo Perez-Truglia, 2020. "The Effects of Income Transparency on Well-Being: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(4), pages 1019-1054, April.
    10. Hilke Brockmann, 2012. "Das Glück der Migranten: eine Lebenslaufanalyse zum subjektiven Wohlbefinden von Migranten der ersten Generation in Deutschland," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 504, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    11. Martí­n Leites & Xavier Ramos, 2017. "The effect of relative concern on life satisfaction: Relative deprivation and loss aversion," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 17-18, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    12. Santiago Budria, 2013. "Are Relative-Income Effects Constant Across the Well-Being Distribution?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 1379-1408, August.
    13. Asena Caner, 2016. "Happiness and Life Satisfaction in Turkey in Recent Years," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 127(1), pages 361-399, May.
    14. Filiz Gülal & Adam Ayaita, 2020. "The Impact of Minimum Wages on Well-Being: Evidence from a Quasi-experiment in Germany," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(7), pages 2669-2692, October.
    15. Vanessa Gash & Anke C Plagnol, 2021. "The Partner Pay Gap: Associations between Spouses’ Relative Earnings and Life Satisfaction among Couples in the UK," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(3), pages 566-583, June.
    16. Vendrik, Maarten C.M., 2013. "Adaptation, anticipation and social interaction in happiness: An integrated error-correction approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 131-149.
    17. Alexandru Cojocaru, 2016. "Does Relative Deprivation Matter in Developing Countries: Evidence from Six Transition Economies," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 125(3), pages 735-756, February.
    18. Ozan Eksi & Neslihan Kaya, 2017. "Life Satisfaction and Keeping Up with Other Countries," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 199-228, February.
    19. Li, Linyang, 2018. "Financial inclusion and poverty: The role of relative income," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 165-191.
    20. Sun Youn Lee & Fumio Ohtake, 2021. "How Conscious Are You of Others? Further Evidence on Relative Income and Happiness," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(8), pages 3321-3356, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:175:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-020-04587-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.