IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v72y2012i01p225-251_00.html

Pay Cuts for the Boss: Executive Compensation in the 1940s

Author

Listed:
  • FRYDMAN, CAROLA
  • MOLLOY, RAVEN

Abstract

Executive pay fell during the 1940s, marking the last notable decrease in the past 70 years. We study this decline using a new panel data set on the remuneration of top executives in 246 firms. Government regulation—including explicit salary restrictions and taxation—had, at best, a modest effect on executive pay. By contrast, a decline in the returns to firm size and an increase in the power of labor unions contributed greatly to the reduction in executive compensation relative to other workers’ earnings from 1940 to 1946. The continued decrease in relative executive pay remains largely unexplained.

Suggested Citation

  • Frydman, Carola & Molloy, Raven, 2012. "Pay Cuts for the Boss: Executive Compensation in the 1940s," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(1), pages 225-251, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:72:y:2012:i:01:p:225-251_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S002205071100249X/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Callaway, Brantly & Collins, William J., 2018. "Unions, workers, and wages at the peak of the American labor movement," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 95-118.
    2. Carola Frydman, 2019. "Rising Through the Ranks: The Evolution of the Market for Corporate Executives, 1936–2003," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(11), pages 4951-4979, November.
    3. Peiqiong Wang & Xianhua Zhang & Taozhi Wang & Zilu Wan, 2023. "Executive compensation controls and corporate cash holdings," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(9), pages 1-26, September.
    4. Alexandre Mas, 2016. "Does Disclosure affect CEO Pay Setting? Evidence from the Passage of the 1934 Securities and Exchange Act," Working Papers 2016-5, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    5. Artola Blanco, Miguel & Gómez-Blanco, Victor Manuel, 2025. "Reassessing the great compression among top earners: The overlooked role of taxation and self-employment," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    6. Henry S Farber & Daniel Herbst & Ilyana Kuziemko & Suresh Naidu, 2021. "Unions and Inequality over the Twentieth Century: New Evidence from Survey Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(3), pages 1325-1385.
    7. Frydman, Carola & Papanikolaou, Dimitris, 2018. "In search of ideas: Technological innovation and executive pay inequality," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 1-24.
    8. Bengtsson, Erik & Molinder, Jakob, 2024. "Incomes and income inequality in Stockholm, 1870–1970: Evidence from micro data," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • M50 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - General
    • N32 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    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:cup:jechis:v:72:y:2012:i:01:p:225-251_00. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    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.