These Two Studies Turn Wall Street's Economic Argument On Its Head
Two studies released in the past few weeks are busting long-held myths about what makes our economy grow.
The first came in June from three professors: Michael J. Cooper of the University of Utah, Huseyin Gulen of Purdue, and P. Raghavendra Rau of the University of Cambridge. They looked at the long-term performance of 1,500 businesses and found that higher CEO pay has a negative effect on a company's performance.
Using data from 1994 to 2013, the professors saw that companies in the top 10 percent of CEO pay produced "negative abnormal returns" (lower shareholder returns than other firms in their industry) or around -8 percent over three years. The higher the pay got, the more pronounced the effect: the top 5 percent of highest paid CEOs steered their companies to a 15 percent worse performance.
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