A recent study by three business professors published last fall in Organizational Science indicates that CEOs are overpaid along with those further down along with those further down the corporate ladder. Specifically, the study suggested that CEOs are concerned more the fairness of their own pay and can often exert significant influence on its fairness relative to other CEOs.

The study itself was conducted by Rutgers University professor James Wade along with Stanford University professor Timothy Pollock. Their work surveyed over 120 companies between 1981 and 1985 (despite the age of the data, both professors contend that current data would yield similar conclusions). The results suggested that if a CEO was overpaid by 64%, another executive one rung down the ladder would be overpaid by 26%, and those four levels down would be overpaid 12%. While these results may be questionable in nature due to the date of the data, it does indicate at least a tendency towards executives being overpaid relative to eachother.