Technological Change and the Growing Inequality in Managerial Compensation

Hanno Lustig, Chad Syverson, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh

NBER Working Paper No. 14661
Issued in January 2009, Revised in December 2011
NBER Program(s):Corporate Finance, Economic Fluctuations and Growth, Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

Three of the most fundamental changes in US corporations since the early 1970s have been (1) the increased importance of organizational capital in production, (2) the increase in managerial income inequality and pay-performance sensitivity, and (3) the secular decrease in labor market reallocation. Our paper develops a simple explanation for these changes: a shift in the composition of productivity growth away from vintage-specific to general growth. This shift has stimulated the accumulation of organizational capital in existing firms and reduced the need for reallocating workers to new firms. We characterize the optimal managerial compensation contract when firms accumulate organizational capital but risk-averse managers cannot commit to staying with the firm. A calibrated version of the model reproduces the increase in managerial compensation inequality and the increased sensitivity of pay to performance in the data over the last three decades.

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w14661

Published: Lustig, Hanno & Syverson, Chad & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn, 2011. "Technological change and the growing inequality in managerial compensation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 601-627, March. citation courtesy of

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