Knowledge that Transforms

The authors' estimates of the pay-performance relation (including pay, options, stockholding, and dismissal) for chief executive officers indicate that CEO wealth changes $3.25 for every $1,000 changes in shareholder wealth. Although the incentives generated by stock ownership are large relative to pay and dismissal incentives, most CEOs hold trivial fractions of the firms' stock, and ownership levels have declined over the past fifty years. The authors hypothesize that public and private political forces impose constraints that reduce the pay-performance sensitivity. Declines in both the pay-performance relation and the level of CEO pay since the 1930s are consistent with this hypothesis.

A model of equilibrium unemployment and vacancies is presented in which the absence of a market for interviews can yield externalities and inefficiency. Inefficiency results in market forces that lead firms to charge fees for interviews or to change the wage rate. These market forces require substantial information and may not operate. A graphical analysis shows how such forces would cause wages to adjust to shifts in supply, taxes, and transfers between workers and firms. With excessive unemployment, efficiency requires a transfer of income from workers to firms.