IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp17243.html

CEO Pay Disclosure and Within-Firm Wage Inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Maida, Agata

    (Università degli Studi di Milano)

  • Pezone, Vincenzo

    (Tilburg University)

Abstract

We analyze the effect of CEO pay disclosure on wage distribution by exploiting a 1998 reform requiring Italian publicly listed companies to disclose top executives' compensation. In firms where CEOs disclose high total compensation, the top 5 percent and 1 percent of the within-firm wage distribution rise substantially. Instead, the effect on average wages is small and only marginally significant. As a result, wage inequality increases. These effects are stronger for workers with low experience or located in the main region of the firm's operations. Moreover, they are driven by changes in workers' bargaining power, rather than by sorting.

Suggested Citation

  • Maida, Agata & Pezone, Vincenzo, 2024. "CEO Pay Disclosure and Within-Firm Wage Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 17243, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17243
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp17243.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paolo Acciari & Alberto Polo & Giovanni L. Violante, 2022. "And Yet It Moves: Intergenerational Mobility in Italy," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 118-163, July.
    2. Xavier Gabaix & Augustin Landier, 2008. "Why has CEO Pay Increased So Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 49-100.
    3. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2003. "Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 1-41.
    4. David Card & Alexandre Mas & Enrico Moretti & Emmanuel Saez, 2012. "Inequality at Work: The Effect of Peer Salaries on Job Satisfaction," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2981-3003, October.
    5. Volpin, Paolo F., 2002. "Governance with poor investor protection: evidence from top executive turnover in Italy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 61-90, April.
    6. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2009. "Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 8769, December.
    7. Xavier Gabaix & Augustin Landier & Julien Sauvagnat, 2014. "CEO Pay and Firm Size: An Update After the Crisis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(574), pages 40-59, February.
    8. Michael Baker & Yosh Halberstam & Kory Kroft & Alexandre Mas & Derek Messacar, 2023. "Pay Transparency and the Gender Gap," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 157-183, April.
    9. Zoë Cullen & Ricardo Perez-Truglia, 2022. "How Much Does Your Boss Make? The Effects of Salary Comparisons," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 130(3), pages 766-822.
    10. David Card & Ana Rute Cardoso & Patrick Kline, 2016. "Bargaining, Sorting, and the Gender Wage Gap: Quantifying the Impact of Firms on the Relative Pay of Women," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(2), pages 633-686.
    11. Henrik Cronqvist & Fredrik Heyman & Mattias Nilsson & Helena Svaleryd & Jonas Vlachos, 2009. "Do Entrenched Managers Pay Their Workers More?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(1), pages 309-339, February.
    12. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 1999. "Is There a Discretion in Wage Setting? A Test Using Takeover Legislation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(3), pages 535-554, Autumn.
    13. Gormley, Todd A. & Matsa, David A., 2016. "Playing it safe? Managerial preferences, risk, and agency conflicts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 431-455.
    14. Alexandre Mas, 2017. "Does Transparency Lead to Pay Compression?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(5), pages 1683-1721.
    15. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    16. Faia, Ester & Mayer, Maximilian & Pezone, Vincenzo, 2020. "The Value of Firm Networks: A Natural Experiment on Board Connections," CEPR Discussion Papers 14591, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    17. Yihui Pan & Elena S. Pikulina & Stephan Siegel & Tracy Yue Wang, 2022. "Do Equity Markets Care about Income Inequality? Evidence from Pay Ratio Disclosure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(2), pages 1371-1411, April.
    18. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    19. Erzo F. P. Luttmer, 2005. "Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 963-1002.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dittmann, Ingolf & Montone, Maurizio & Zhu, Yuhao, 2023. "Wage gap and stock returns: Do investors dislike pay inequality?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    2. Jonas Hjort & Xuan Li & Heather Sarsons, 2020. "Across-Country Wage Compression in Multinationals," NBER Working Papers 26788, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Yangyang Chen & Jeffrey Ng & Emmanuel Ofosu & Xin Yang, 2026. "Does Pay Transparency for Employees Affect Product Recalls?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3), pages 1287-1312, June.
    4. Jonas Hjort & Xuan Li & Heather Sarsons, 2020. "Random-Coefficients Logit Demand Estimation with Zero-Valued Market Shares," Working Papers 2020-15, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    5. Jack Blundell, 2021. "Wage responses to gender pay gap reporting requirements," CEP Discussion Papers dp1750, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    6. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/vbu6kd1s68o6r34k5bcm3iopv is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Diaz, Lina & Houser, Daniel & Ifcher, John & Zarghamee, Homa, 2023. "Estimating social preferences using stated satisfaction: Novel support for inequity aversion," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    8. Werner, Peter, 2024. "On common evaluation standards and the acceptance of wage inequality," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 137-156.
    9. Gary Bolton & Peter Werner, 2016. "The influence of potential on wages and effort," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(3), pages 535-561, September.
    10. Demir, Gökay, 2022. "Labor market frictions and spillover effects from publicly announced sectoral minimum wages," Ruhr Economic Papers 985, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    11. Srikant Devaraj & Pankaj C. Patel, 2022. "State bans on pay secrecy and earnings: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 60(4), pages 697-734, December.
    12. Clément S. Bellet, 2017. "The paradox of the Joneses: superstar houses and mortgage frenzy in suburban America," CEP Discussion Papers dp1462, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    13. Diriwaechter, Patric & Shvartsman, Elena, 2018. "The anticipation and adaptation effects of intra- and interpersonal wage changes on job satisfaction," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 116-140.
    14. Blundell, Jack, 2021. "Wage responses to gender pay gap reporting requirements," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 114416, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Axel Ockenfels & Dirk Sliwka & Peter Werner, 2015. "Bonus Payments and Reference Point Violations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(7), pages 1496-1513, July.
    16. Cui, Zhiwei & Li, Xueheng & Zhang, Boyu, 2025. "Decomposability and the social comparison trap," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    17. Mark J. Browne & Annette Hofmann & Andreas Richter & Sophie-Madeleine Roth & Petra Steinorth, 2021. "Peer effects in risk preferences: Evidence from Germany," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 299(1), pages 1129-1163, April.
    18. Demougin, Dominique & Upton, Harvey, 2023. "Relative income concerns and the Easterlin Paradox: A theoretical framework," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    19. Clément Bellet, 2017. "Essays on inequality, social preferences and consumer behavior [Inégalités, préférences sociales et comportement du consommateur]," Sciences Po Economics Publications (main) tel-03455045, HAL.
    20. Dohmen, Thomas, 2014. "Behavioral labor economics: Advances and future directions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    21. Clément Bellet, 2017. "Essays on inequality, social preferences and consumer behavior [Inégalités, préférences sociales et comportement du consommateur]," SciencePo Working papers tel-03455045, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D9 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics
    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp17243. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.html .

    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.