Summary
Introduction
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) publishes an analysis at the beginning of each year comparing the compensation of the country’s top 100 CEOs with the wages of average workers. The enormous gap between the two regularly garners significant media interest. The analysis suggests that this gap is restricted to CEOs and offers a number of solutions including large tax increases, new regulations, and changes to corporate governance.
This Research Bulletin is intended to place the CCPA’s analysis in a broader framework and raise important questions about the compensation of society’s most successful people, not just in commerce but in society more broadly. It begins with a brief overview of the past CCPA work as well as the expectations for their 2018 analysis. The section then expands the CCPA’s analysis by examining all the CEOs available in the database of the Globe and Mail (G&M). This is done to better understand the extent to which the compensation gap exists for all CEOs (or at least those in the G&M database) or whether it is restricted to only the very top CEOs. The second section of the essay provides a brief summary of the research on “superstar” compensation, the earnings of the very top talent across a wide range of sectors of the economy including not only commerce but also sports, culture, and entertainment. The Bulletin ends with a brief conclusion.