It was a major topic of discussion during the era of corporate scandals a couple years ago, but the issue of executive compensation still pops up in the news from time to time, and it remains a problem with which serious thinkers continue to grapple.
Harvard’s Lucian Bebchuk and Berkeley’s Jesse Fried started one important strand of the discussion when they published Pay Without Performance in 2004. (Robert Kennedy reviewed it for Markets & Morality [available to subscribers]). In brief, Bebchuk and Fried proposed measures to enable and encourage more active shareholders as a check on exorbitant executive pay.
The discussion continues at Harvard’s Program on Corporate Governance, which features further commentary from Bebchuk as well as papers that criticize his proposals for reform. One paper not linked at that page is Stephen Bainbridge’s, which argues that boards of directors are better suited to make corporate governance decisions than are shareholders.
