IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bfr/banfra/294.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Compensation in the Financial Sector: Are all Bankers Superstars?

Author

Listed:
  • Célérier, C.

Abstract

Based on a survey among French engineers, I find that employees in the financial sector are highly paid. I also find large pay differences within the sector and that a large share of compensation is variable. I consider three potential models accounting for these facts: a model of superstars (Rosen, 1981), a model of compensating wage differential (Lucas, 1977), and a model of moral hazard (Laffont and Martimort, 2002). I investigate and test the empirical implications of these models. I conclude that the model of superstars fits better the data than the models of moral hazard and compensating wage differential.

Suggested Citation

  • Célérier, C., 2010. "Compensation in the Financial Sector: Are all Bankers Superstars?," Working papers 294, Banque de France.
    • Handle: RePEc:bfr:banfra:294
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://publications.banque-france.fr/sites/default/files/medias/documents/working-paper_294_2010.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
    2. Xavier Gabaix & Augustin Landier, 2008. "Why has CEO Pay Increased So Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 49-100.
    3. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:1619-1650 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 2001. "The Influence of the Financial Revolution on the Nature of Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 206-211, May.
    5. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2005. "Why do some firms give stock options to all employees?: An empirical examination of alternative theories," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 99-133, April.
    6. Pierre Cahuc & André Zylberberg, 2004. "Labor Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026203316x, April.
    7. Hsuan‐Chi Chen & Jay R. Ritter, 2000. "The Seven Percent Solution," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1105-1131, June.
    8. Kevin M. Murphy & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1991. "The Allocation of Talent: Implications for Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 503-530.
    9. Gollier, Christian, 1991. "Wage Differentials, the Insider-Outsider Dilemma, and Entry-Deterrence," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 43(3), pages 391-408, July.
    10. Martins, Pedro S., 2004. "Industry wage premia: evidence from the wage distribution," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 157-163, May.
    11. Shapiro, Carl & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1984. "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 433-444, June.
    12. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2001. "Are CEOs Rewarded for Luck? The Ones Without Principals Are," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(3), pages 901-932.
    13. Lucas, Robert E B, 1977. "Hedonic Wage Equations and Psychic Wages in the Returns to Schooling," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(4), pages 549-558, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2011. "Personnel Economics: Hiring and Incentives," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 20, pages 1769-1823, Elsevier.
    2. Edward P. Lazear & Paul Oyer, 2012. "Personnel Economics [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    3. Edward P. Lazear, 1995. "Personnel Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121883, April.
    4. Francisco Gallego & Borja Larraín, 2010. "CEO Compensation among Firms Controlled by Large Shareholders: Evidence from Emerging Markets," Documentos de Trabajo 379, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    5. Kelly Shue & Richard Townsend, 2016. "Growth through Rigidity: An Explanation for the Rise in CEO Pay," NBER Working Papers 21975, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Gallego, Francisco & Larrain, Borja, 2012. "CEO compensation and large shareholders: Evidence from emerging markets," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 621-642.
    7. Gill, David & Prowse, Victoria & Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2013. "Cheating in the workplace: An experimental study of the impact of bonuses and productivity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 120-134.
    8. Pierre Chaigneau & Nicolas Sahuguet, "undated". "The structure of CEO pay: pay-for-luck and stock-options," FMG Discussion Papers dp713, Financial Markets Group.
    9. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2016. "Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström: Contract Theory," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2016-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    10. Bang Dang Nguyen & Kasper Meisner Nielsen, 2014. "What Death Can Tell: Are Executives Paid for Their Contributions to Firm Value?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(12), pages 2994-3010, December.
    11. Huitfeldt, Ingrid & Kostøl, Andreas R. & Nimczik, Jan & Weber, Andrea, 2023. "Internal labor markets: A worker flow approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 233(2), pages 661-688.
    12. Kini, Omesh & Williams, Ryan, 2012. "Tournament incentives, firm risk, and corporate policies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 350-376.
    13. Alex Bryson & John Forth & Minghai Zhou, 2014. "Same or Different? The CEO Labour Market in China's Public Listed Companies," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(574), pages 90-108, February.
    14. Edmans, Alex & Goldstein, Itay & Zhu, John, 2011. "Contracting with Synergies," Working Papers 11-65, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    15. Edmans, Alex & Gosling, Tom & Jenter, Dirk, 2023. "CEO compensation: Evidence from the field," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(3).
    16. Casey Rothschild & Florian Scheuer, 2016. "Optimal Taxation with Rent-Seeking," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(3), pages 1225-1262.
    17. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1232-1287, December.
    18. Pierre Chaigneau & Nicolas Sahuguet, 2012. "Pay-for-Luck in CEO Compensation: Matching and Efficient Contracting," Cahiers de recherche 1224, CIRPEE.
    19. Harashima, Taiji, 2019. "Why Is Executive Compensation So High? A Model of Executive Compensation," MPRA Paper 91326, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Chaigneau, Pierre & Sahuguet, Nicolas, 2013. "The effect of monitoring on CEO pay practices in a matching equilibrium," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 55405, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Finance; compensation ; wage distribution ; wage structure ; incentives; superstars;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • M5 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:bfr:banfra:294. 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: Michael brassart (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdfgvfr.html .

    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.