Calculating CEO Benefits

The article suggests accurate accounting of CEO pay is hard, because a lot of it is given in terms of future value; however, I think that the distinctions are fairly trivial. Whether someone is making $21 million or $25 million a year is less important than the simple fact that such an income is far too high. An income of $25 million a year is about fifty cents earned for every second of work; I am not convinced that the market would value anyone's input at such a price. More likely is that CEO pay is determined outside of market mechanisms (as discussed in this paper), reflecting a suboptimal distribution of resources.