STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS â?? What do Disney, AT&T, Exxon, and Verizon have in common? Based on economic performance and what they paid their CEOs from 1991-2002, a new academic study argues that all these firms were headed by CEOs who were paid too much.

These firms, say the researchers, are among a group of companies headed by CEOs whose pay is negatively related to job skill: The CEOs seem to be rewardedâ??in most cases, quite amplyâ??for their bad performance. Disney's Michael Eisner, for example, was paid $38 million above the industry average when for three out of six years the company's performance actually declined in relation to other firms in the entertainment industry.

"Lately there have been legitimate concerns about CEO pay," said Stanford Professor Robert Daines. In 1992, the average CEO of an S&P 500 firm earned $2.7 million. By 2000, average pay for these CEOs had increased more than 400 percent, to more than $14 million. When compared to the pay of average workers, the increase is even more dramatic: In 1992, CEOs were paid 82 times the average of blue-collar workers; in 2004, they were paid more than 400 times those salaries.

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/res...s_ceopay.shtml