Doctoral Dissertation Research: Trends in Executive Compensation 1936-2002

企业高管构成了劳动力市场中一个虽小但很重要的部分。自世纪之交所有权与控制权分离以来，作为上市公司的主要决策者，高管们一直对经济中很大一部分资产负责。尽管在过去的20年里，金融和劳动经济学家对管理人才市场进行了广泛的分析，但对早期市场的演变却知之甚少。本项目通过构建首个从20世纪30年代至今的高管薪酬一致性面板数据集，填补了这一空白。这些数据对于理解20世纪管理层薪酬的演变和职业经理人的崛起至关重要。尽管最近高管薪酬的变化有据可查，但由于缺乏一致的数据，对长期趋势的理解受到了阻碍。以前的研究人员研究了短期的管理层薪酬，但研究方法的差异使得使用这些数据来构建长期的一致趋势成为可能。这个项目通过从历史公司报告中收集高管薪酬数据来解决这个问题。由于美国证券交易委员会（Securities and Exchange Commission）的要求，自上世纪30年代末以来，这些文件每年都提供有关上市公司高管薪酬的信息。由于报告要求并没有随着时间的推移发生重大变化，这些数据将允许在20世纪的大部分时间内对高管薪酬的不同组成部分进行一致的衡量。获得对管理层薪酬水平和组成部分的一致估计，将有助于对企业高管市场如何随着时间的推移而变化提供重要的新见解。此外，该项目将首次对薪酬与企业绩效之间的关系如何随着时间的推移而变化提供一致的估计，从而提高我们对合同的最优性及其对经济长期绩效的影响的理解。最后，该项目将揭示过去70年来税收政策与收入不平等趋势之间的相互作用。通过研究高级官员如何在不同的税收制度下从应税表格中转移收入，该项目将推进对高收入者对税收的行为反应的现有知识。更广泛的影响高管薪酬的历史数据对于解决许多问题是必要的，这些问题涵盖了广泛的主题，包括经理市场、组织、合同理论、公司融资和税收政策。由于这些主题超出了所提议的研究议程的范围，因此这些数据将引起许多其他社会科学家的兴趣。一旦该项目完成，数据集将向公众开放，为其他研究人员提供扩展自己工作的机会。这个项目对公共政策也有几个重要的影响。提高对高收入者对税率的反应的理解，可以为最优税收政策、税收收入和收入再分配的讨论提供信息。公司高管一直是收入分配中最顶层的1%。因此，了解这些高收入人群对税率变化的反应对于确定税收政策变化是否会产生预期的后果至关重要。此外，一项关于高管薪酬长期趋势的研究，为过去十年中高管和员工之间前所未有的收入不平等水平提供了一个重要的历史视角。在当前有关最近高管薪酬过高的辩论中，过去的政策对薪酬的绝对和相对水平的影响应该是一个重要的考虑因素。

Corporate executives comprise a small but important part of the labor market. As themain decision makers in public corporations, top officers have been responsible for a largefraction of assets in the economy ever since the separation of ownership from control at the turnof the century. Although finance and labor economists have analyzed the market for managerialpersonnel extensively during the past 20 years, far less is known about the evolution of themarket during earlier times. This project fills in the gap by constructing the first consistent paneldataset on executive compensation to extend from the 1930s to the present. These data areessential for understanding the evolution of managerial pay and the rise of professional managersover the course of the twentieth century.Intellectual MeritsAlthough recent changes in executive compensation are well documented, anunderstanding of longer run trends has been hampered by a lack of consistent data. Previousresearchers have studied managerial pay for short periods of time, but variation in methodologiesacross studies prohibits using these data to construct consistent trends over a long horizon. Thisproject solves this problem by collecting data on executive compensation from historicalcorporate reports. Due to requirements imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission,these documents have provided annual information on the compensation of top officers inpublicly traded firms ever since the late 1930s. Because the reporting requirements have notchanged significantly over time, these data will allow for different components of executive payto be measured consistently for most of the twentieth century. Obtaining consistent estimates of both the level and components of managerial pay willcontribute a significant new insight into how the market for corporate executives has changedover time. Furthermore, this project will be the first to provide consistent estimates of how therelationship between pay and firm performance has changed over time, thereby improving ourunderstanding of the optimality of contracts and their effects on the long-run performance of theeconomy. Finally, this project will shed light on the interaction between tax policy and trends inincome inequality during the past 70 years. By studying how top officers have been able to shiftincome out of taxable forms during different tax regimes, this project will advance the currentknowledge on the behavioral responses to taxation from top income earners.Broader ImpactHistorical data on executive compensation are necessary to address numerous questionsthat span a wide range of subjects including the market for managers, organizations, contracttheory, corporate finance, and tax policy. Because these topics exceed the scope of the proposedresearch agenda, the data will be of interest to many other social scientists. Once this project iscomplete the dataset will be made available to the public, providing other researchers with anopportunity to expand their own work.This project also has several important implications for public policy. An improvedunderstanding of how high-income earners respond to tax rates can inform the discussion onoptimal tax policy, tax revenues, and income redistribution. Corporate executives have alwaysbeen among the top 1% of the income distribution. Thus, understanding the response of thesehigh income individuals to changes in tax rates is critical for determining whether changes in taxpolicy will have the intended consequences. Moreover, a study on the long-run trends inexecutive pay adds an important historical perspective to the unprecedented levels of incomeinequality between executives and workers that have been experienced during the past decade.The effects of past policies on the absolute and relative levels of pay should be an importantconsideration in the current debate concerning the recent excesses in executive compensation.