Executives are rewarded handsome

Cutting the pie 如何分饼

Is there a better way of rewarding executives?
执行官能有更好的回报方式吗？

Feb 20th 2020 | words 782

ONE OF THE issues at the centre of the debate about inequality is the meteoric rise of executive pay. The ratio between the pay of American CEOs and ordinary workers rose from 20:1 in 1965 to 278:1 in 2018, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a think-tank. The London Business School (LBS) recently held a conference on what caused the rise, and whether it is justified.

在热议不平等问题的时候，其中之一就是执行官一夜暴富的现象。根据经济政策机构（一个智库）的统计显示，美国CEO们与工薪阶层的薪资比例从1965年的20:1飙升到了2018年的278:1。伦敦商业学院（LBS）近期举办了一场会议，探讨了比例上涨的原因以及其合理性。

At the conference, Dirk Jenter of the London School of Economics pointed out that the pay of chief executives in America was largely flat between the 1940s and the 1970s. It then rose spectacularly in the 1980s and 1990s before flattening out v. 竭尽全力；用全速. What changed in the 1980s was that executive rewards began to be more focused on company performance and share options. The performance-related element rose from 16% of executive salaries in the 1970s to 26% in the 1980s and 47% in the 1990s.

会上，伦敦经济学院的Dirk Jenter指出在20世纪40年代和70年代，美国首席执行官的薪资水平并不高，但在80年代到90年代间迅速膨胀，之后拉高了这一职位的平均薪资。80年代薪资变化的主要原因是执行官的报酬开始与公司整体利益和股权挂钩。公司整体利益带来的薪资占比从70年代的16%上升到80年代的26%，随后在90年代飙升到了47%。

This shift coincided with the great equity bull market of the 1980s. As Western economies recovered from the stagflationary problems of the 1970s, shares were repriced. The cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio (a measure which compares share prices with a 10-year average of profits) rose from less than 9 at the start of 1980 to 44 in 1999. Little wonder that executives with share options made out like bandits. But was this down to their skill, or to the policies of Alan Greenspan and Ronald Reagan?

与之呼应的是80年代股票牛市，西方经济从70年代的滞涨问题中复苏，重新定义了股票价格。 周期性调整市盈率（对比十年间股票价格平均利润的衡量方式）从1980年不足9点开始上涨到99年的44点，难怪拥有股权的执行官在他人眼中像个暴发户一般。但是，这样的涨幅究竟是归功于他们自身的能力，还是艾伦·格林斯潘（美联储主席）和罗纳德·里根（美国前总统）的政策？

• 格林斯潘坚持反通货膨胀主义，勇于突破经济理论的束缚。传统理论认为，失业率高于百分之六将导致经济萎缩，低于百分之五将触发通货膨胀。而美国的失业率仅仅百分之四，经济仍在稳定增长。传统理论的另一个论点是经济过热必将引发通货膨胀，但他注意到大规模的高科技投资在提高生产率的同时降低了生产成本，因此在推动新技术革命方面不遗余力。国际经济研究所长伯格斯坦称这是格林斯潘“最了不起的历史性贡献”，他“不仅改变了金融政策，也改变了我们的经济和未来”。结果美国经济得以平安“软着陆”。降低联邦基金利率至1%，刺激经济以缓解通货紧缩。

• 1981年，里根政府实行税制改革，把最高进税率从70%下降到28%（对一部分高收入者最高税率为33%），大大削弱了税收的累进性，形成了对美国经济的较大刺激。此外，里根在他的第一任期中还实行了加速折旧法和对投资的课税扣除，这对1983-1984年资本投资的急剧增长起了很大作用。1985年的税制改革把累进所得税率降到低于大多数发达国家的水平，为美国创造了吸收外国资本的良好环境 。

Most investors were doing extremely well during this period, so executive pay seemed a matter of little consequence to them. Even now, if CEOs were to work for free, this would not represent a huge boost to shareholder returns. Average CEO pay of S&P 500 companies in 2018 was 14.5m, meaning that executives collectively took home $7.25bn. In contrast, the companies they worked for returned 1.26trn to investors in dividends and buy-backs that year.

那个时期投资者回报颇丰，所以执行官薪资的涨幅对他们来说是微不足道的。今天，要是CEO们拿着平均工资干活，就无法体现出公司巨额的股东收益。2018年标准普尔500指数企业CEO的平均工资是1.45千万美元，意味着整个CEO行业集体收入是72.5亿，而那一天年他们任职的公司返还给投资者的股息和回购为1.26万亿美元。

The principal-agent problem plays a key role. Most shares are owned by professional investors who work for big fund-management groups and are well paid themselves. They have little incentive to demand big changes in pay structure, unless salaries look particularly egregious.

1. incentive to ~ (for/to sb/sth) (to do sth) something that encourages you to do sth 激励；刺激
2. egregious ( formal ) extremely bad 极糟的；极坏的

委托与代理的角色意义重大，公司绝大部分的股权掌握在专业投资人手里，这些专业投资人背后都有庞大的资金管理集团，他们本身的报酬也异常丰厚。除非薪资低的离谱，否则他们几乎想不到要改变薪酬结构。

The underlying investors—ordinary savers—have not always done so well. Take, for example, members of corporate pension funds. Stockmarket gains have not been shared equally with them. When share prices were booming, many companies stopped making pension-fund contributions. Then in the 2000s, when markets fell and the cost of funding final-salary pensions soared, companies closed such schemes and switched to “defined contribution” plans. These are much less generous to workers. It is not just that workers’ pay has not kept pace with that of executive remuneration over the past 40 years; their pension rights have deteriorated.

可惜的是公司的底层股东，也就是普通工薪族，就没那么幸运了。就拿领企业养老基金的人来说，股市盈利并没有公平地分配到这些人身上。股价高涨的时候，许多公司反而停止了在这方面的投入。2000年代，当市场好景不再，最终薪资养老金成本飙升的时候，企业摒弃了这些养老金计划，转而确定缴费型计划的模式，对于员工来说到手的钱就少的可怜了。引起人们不满的原因，不仅仅是在过去的40多年普通员工的薪资上涨幅度远远比不上执行官的报酬，还有他们的养老权益也在逐渐滑坡。

• 确定给付型(DB)：确定给付型计划(Defined Benefit, DB)，又称以支定收型计划，是企业首先确定职工在满足一定条件基础上退休时，所能够享受的待遇，然后根据事先职工当时的工资水平、工作年限、企业预期人员变动、工资增长率、死亡率、预定利率等的预测，依照精算原理确定各年的缴费水平，即企业根据将来需要支出的养老金来确定企业现在应该缴纳的企业年金费用。

• 确定缴费型计划(Defined Contribution, DC)，又称以收定支型计划，是企业首先确定缴费水平，由企业和职工按规定比例出资，计入个人账户。企业年金缴费可以交给某一金融机构，如投资基金或单位信托基金，由该机构向职工提供投资工具，由职工决定如何在各种基金中分布投资组合；也可以购买已建立个人账户的团体年金保险，由人寿保险公司提供不同风格的投资账户，由职工决定在不同投资风格账户中的基金单位数。

A broader justification for high CEO pay might be that businessmen have been able to make their companies more efficient and thus transform economic growth. However, the fastest period of economic and productivity growth in the Western world was in the 1950s and 1960s when CEO pay was much lower than it is today. As CEO pay has rocketed, productivity growth has slowed down.

从宏观上看，CEO报酬上涨的其中一个正当理由是这些商人能够使公司效率提高，从而转化成经济收益。但西方世界经济和生产力增长最迅速的时期是1950年代和60年代，那个阶段CEO的报酬比今天要低很多。这么看来，生产力增长虽趋于平缓，CEO的报酬却呈井喷之势。

In a thoughtful new book, “Grow the Pie; How great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit”, Alex Edmans of LBS argues that the wealth accrued by a boss does not necessarily come at the expense of others. “Visionary leaders can transform a company, growing the pie for the benefit of all” he writes.

任职于伦敦商学院的Alex Edmans在他引人深思的一本新书《把饼做大—大公司目标和利益如何兼顾》中说到，老板的财富增长并不一定以牺牲员工的福利为代价，“有远见的领导人可以拉动公司整体利益，把每个人的饼都做大”。

This makes perfect sense at the level of the individual firm but is it true in aggregate? Executives may have prospered since 1980 but this has not always trickled down to workers. Real median household income in America grew at an average annual pace of just 0.5% between 1979 and 2016, before taxes and transfers.

从部分私人企业的层面看这是合理的，但从宏观上看企业普遍都这样吗？自1980年以来，执行官薪酬上涨与普通员工并不同步，1979至2016年，美国实际家庭收入的中位数（在税收和转移支付之前）年增速仅为0.5%。

• 收入中位数，是指用统计学上中位数的概念来衡量某地区普通民众的收入水平，相比较于人均收入，收入中位数更贴近普通民众的实际生活水平，因为某地区的人均收入因贫富的差距可远远大于收入中位数，而收入中位数则可以将这种差距反映出来。

• 转移支付是指政府或企业无偿地支付给个人以增加其收入和购买力的费用。它是一种收入再分配形式。转移支付包括政府的转移支付和企业的转移支付。政府的转移支付大都带有福利支出性质，如社会保险福利津贴、抚恤金、养老金、失业补助、救济金以及各种补助费等；农产品价格补贴也是政府的转移支付。由于政府的转移支付等于把财政收入还给个人，故有的西方经济学家称其为负税收。

Mr Edmans’s view of pie-growing is nuanced. He advocates an approach to business with the primary aim of creating value for society. Profits are not the main goal but a welcome side effect.

Edman的整体利益观点是很微妙的，他认为企业最基本的目标是创造社会价值，利益并不是首要目的，它只是一个好的“副作用”。

It is not pie in the sky. Mr Edmans conducted research about the companies ranked the “best to work for”, a measure of whether firms are looking after the interests of employees as well as investors. Shares in the firms with the best rankings outperformed in subsequent years, even when controlling for factors like business size and industrial sector.

这也不是无稽之谈，Edmans为“最受员工喜爱”的公司做了个排名，作为衡量一家公司是否能兼顾员工和投资人利益的方式。 排名靠前的公司在随后几年股票也是领先的，即使对如经营规模和行业领域等因素作了限制，也是如此。

It is still going to be a big challenge to persuade companies to reward their executives on the social value they add. If that ever happens, the list of best-paid CEOs might be a completely different from the one today.

想要说服企业将执行官的报酬与其创造的社会效益挂钩，依然是个巨大的挑战，假如有一天能实现，那么报酬最高的CEO列表上的名字可能会被完全颠覆。