IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/64303.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A middle-manager model of wage and salary distribution within firms

Author

Listed:
  • Kemp-Benedict, Eric

Abstract

Management structure affects income distribution within the firm. We construct a model in which the managerial wage bill is determined by the number of direct reports to each manager (the “span of control”) and the increase in pay between levels in the managerial hierarchy. The model explains, in a natural way, one of the best-documented observations in firm compensation: that CEO pay increases with the size of the firm. It also shows that rising span of control will normally lead to a decline in the ratio of the managerial wage bill to that of production workers. As span of control has been rising in recent decades, this appears to be inconsistent with the widely-documented rise in income inequality. The discrepancy is explained by the rapid expansion of equity-based compensation.

Suggested Citation

  • Kemp-Benedict, Eric, 2015. "A middle-manager model of wage and salary distribution within firms," MPRA Paper 64303, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:64303
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/64303/1/MPRA_paper_64303.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/64393/1/MPRA_paper_64393.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    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. Galbraith James K. & Hale J. Travis, 2006. "American Inequality: From IT Bust to Big Government Boom," The Economists' Voice, De Gruyter, vol. 3(8), pages 1-4, October.
    3. Deepankar Basu & Ramaa Vasudevan, 2013. "Technology, distribution and the rate of profit in the US economy: understanding the current crisis," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 37(1), pages 57-89.
    4. Mark Doms & Timothy Dunne & Kenneth R. Troske, 1997. "Workers, Wages, and Technology," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 253-290.
    5. Thomas Palley, 2012. "Wealth and wealth distribution in the neo-Kaleckian growth model," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 453-474.
    6. Eli Berman & John Bound & Zvi Griliches, 1994. "Changes in the Demand for Skilled Labor within U. S. Manufacturing: Evidence from the Annual Survey of Manufactures," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 367-397.
    7. Thomas I. Palley, 2015. "The middle class in macroeconomics and growth theory: a three-class neo-Kaleckian–Goodwin model," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 39(1), pages 221-243.
    8. Melissa B. Frye, 2004. "Equity‐Based Compensation for Employees: Firm Performance and Determinants," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 27(1), pages 31-54, March.
    9. Main, Brian G M & O'Reilly, Charles A, III & Wade, James, 1993. "Top Executive Pay: Tournament or Teamwork?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 11(4), pages 606-628, October.
    10. Chen, Carl R. & Steiner, Thomas L. & Whyte, Ann Marie, 2006. "Does stock option-based executive compensation induce risk-taking? An analysis of the banking industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 915-945, March.
    11. Farber, Henry S. & Hallock, Kevin F., 2009. "The changing relationship between job loss announcements and stock prices: 1970-1999," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 1-11, January.
    12. E. Geoffrey Love & Nitin Nohria, 2005. "Reducing slack: the performance consequences of downsizing by large industrial firms, 1977–93," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(12), pages 1087-1108, December.
    13. Mahmood Arai, 2003. "Wages, Profits, and Capital Intensity: Evidence from Matched Worker-Firm Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(3), pages 593-618, July.
    14. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2485-2563 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2165-2214 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Leo McCann & Jonathan Morris & John Hassard, 2008. "Normalized Intensity: The New Labour Process of Middle Management," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 343-371, March.
    17. Gerald D. Newbould & John R. Sparkes, 1980. "Models of changes in managerial salaries in five economies," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 1(1), pages 4-11, March.
    18. Pedro Conceicao & James K. Galbraith, 2000. "Constructing Long and Dense Time-Series of Inequality Using the Theil Index," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 26(1), pages 61-74, Winter.
    19. Mehran, Hamid, 1995. "Executive compensation structure, ownership, and firm performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 163-184, June.
    20. Peter F. Kostiuk, 1990. "Firm Size and Executive Compensation," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 25(1), pages 90-105.
    21. Eli Ofek & David Yermack, 2000. "Taking Stock: Equity‐Based Compensation and the Evolution of Managerial Ownership," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1367-1384, June.
    22. Michael C. Jensen & Kevin J. Murphy, 2010. "CEO Incentives—It's Not How Much You Pay, But How," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 22(1), pages 64-76, January.
    23. Richard E. Caves & Matthew B. Krepps, 1993. "Fat: The Displacement of Nonproduction Workers from U.S. Manufacturing Industries," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 24(2 Microec), pages 227-288.
    24. Marc Lavoie, 2009. "Cadrisme within a Post-Keynesian Model of Growth and Distribution," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 369-391.
    25. Sherwin Rosen, 1982. "Authority, Control, and the Distribution of Earnings," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 311-323, Autumn.
    26. Mellow, Wesley, 1982. "Employer Size and Wages," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 64(3), pages 495-501, August.
    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. Kemp-Benedict, Eric, 2015. "New ways to slice the pie: Span of control and wage and salary distribution within firms," MPRA Paper 77072, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 24 Feb 2017.
    2. Jeremy T. Fox, 2009. "Firm-Size Wage Gaps, Job Responsibility, and Hierarchical Matching," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 83-126, January.
    3. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2485-2563 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Stephen G. Sapp, 2008. "The Impact of Corporate Governance on Executive Compensation," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 14(4), pages 710-746, September.
    5. Lin Guo & Abu Jalal & Shahriar Khaksari, 2015. "Bank executive compensation structure, risk taking and the financial crisis," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 609-639, October.
    6. 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.
    7. Phyllis A. Siegel & Donald C. Hambrick, 2005. "Pay Disparities Within Top Management Groups: Evidence of Harmful Effects on Performance of High-Technology Firms," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(3), pages 259-274, June.
    8. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Fredrik Heyman, 2005. "Pay inequality and firm performance: evidence from matched employer-employee data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(11), pages 1313-1327.
    10. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:789-848 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Susana Iranzo & Fabiano Schivardi & Elisa Tosetti, 2008. "Skill Dispersion and Firm Productivity: An Analysis with Employer-Employee Matched Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(2), pages 247-285, April.
    12. Dinara Alpysbayeva & Jozef Konings & Venkat Subramanian & Aigerim Yergabulova, 2022. "Wage dispersion and firm performance: evidence from Kazakhstan," Working Papers 2022/01, Nazarbayev University, Graduate School of Business.
    13. João Paulo Vieito & António Cerqueira & Elísio Brandão & Walayet A. Khan, 2009. "Executive Compensation: the Finance Perspective," Portuguese Journal of Management Studies, ISEG, Universidade de Lisboa, vol. 0(1), pages 3-32.
    14. Xu, Peng, 1997. "Executive Salaries as Tournament Prizes and Executive Bonuses as Managerial Incentives in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 319-346, September.
    15. Fares, M'hand & Orozco, Luis, 2014. "Tournament Mechanism in Wine-Grape Contracts: Evidence from a French Wine Cooperative," Journal of Wine Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(3), pages 320-345, December.
    16. Robert Gibbons & Michael Waldman, 2006. "Enriching a Theory of Wage and Promotion Dynamics inside Firms," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(1), pages 59-108, January.
    17. Sun, Sophia Li & Habib, Ahsan, 2020. "Determinants and consequences of tournament incentives: A survey of the literature in accounting and finance," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    18. Soon Ryoo, 2016. "Inequality of Income and Wealth in the Long Run: A Kaldorian Perspective," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(2), pages 429-457, May.
    19. Johnson, Joanne & Baldwin, John R. & Gray, Tara, 1996. "Avantages salariaux d'origine technologique dans les etablissements canadiens de fabrication pendant les annees 1980," Direction des études analytiques : documents de recherche 1996092f, Statistics Canada, Direction des études analytiques.
    20. Chen Lin & Wei Shen & Dongwei Su, 2011. "Executive Pay at Publicly Listed Firms in China," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(2), pages 417-436.
    21. Chen, Jing & Ezzamel, Mahmoud & Cai, Ziming, 2011. "Managerial power theory, tournament theory, and executive pay in China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 1176-1199, September.
    22. Yusuf Mohammed Nulla & Dimitris Nikolaou Koumparoulis, 2013. "CEO Compensation System in Large Canadian Financial Institutions," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(1), pages 137-155.
    23. Benjamin, Daniel K. & Thornberg, Christopher, 2007. "Organization and incentives in the age of sail," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 317-341, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    span of control; delayering; downsizing; functional income distribution; financialization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D33 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Factor Income Distribution
    • L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure

    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:pra:mprapa:64303. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.