CEO Incentives Shown to Yield Positive Societal Benefits

The negative aspects of large CEO pay and the associated incentives have been a hot political issue in many countries. Our research identifies some positive aspects of CEO incentives in a broader economic/societal context that have been overlooked. In a five-year longitudinal study across major free-market nations in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, we find when a higher proportion of CEOs in a nation receive incentives, that nation’s GDP increases significantly in the following years, independent of the incentives monetary value.​