Business

Making Pay Work: Matching Bonuses and Penalties

In a series of posts the usually reasonable Posner and Becker take a rather strange stand on the recent efforts by the US government to rein in executive compensation. Their fundamental argument goes something like this – bank pay had nothing to do with the crisis and controlling it is not possible. Therefore, it is a bad idea.

Such reasoning is far too simplistic for these individuals, and surprisingly echoes the words of Lord Griffiths, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs, who said that “we have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all”.

Becker and Posner’s posts skirt around two key issues.

First, Becker says that pay had nothing to do with the crisis:

I have not seen convincing evidence that either the level or structure of the pay of top financial executives were important causes of this worldwide financial crash.

On this he is most certainly right. Yet, while pay may not have been a direct cause of the crisis, it was in hindsight a predictive symptom of it. Fundamentally, the crisis was caused by a breakdown in ownership of responsibility. Financial executives, traders, and bankers bought and sold instruments on which they did not own the risk and thus did not feel compelled to view the transaction and the hefty profits that came with it with a healthy dose of skepticism.

No doubt other factors contributed to that tunnel vision – including a blind belief in the correctness of financial wizardry. But an incentive structure that rewarded short-term gain and encouraged overlooking fundamentals certainly did not help.

Posner, for his part, at least agrees to the principle of reforming compensation structures. Yet, he also concludes that “regulating financial compensation is a mistake”  because it cannot be done within the bounds of reason. Even if escrow and clawback clauses were added to executive compensation structures “that would be too small an expected penalty to dissuade him from making the deal. The penalty could not be made sufficiently heavy to disuade him without depriving him of most of his current income.”

Unfortunately for Posner the rebuttal to his “it cannot be done” argument is right there. Why not deprive the executive of most of his current income? The case for doing that is a natural extension of the principle of risk and benefit sharing.

Bonuses were designed to reward employees and allow them to participate in the potential of their work and the performance of their company. But over the years executives have come to view bonuses as part of their normal salary with poor performance to be penalized simply by a lower bonus. This gain-only structure is incomplete and not how it was meant to be. The logical thing would be to have a bonus for good years and a penalty for bad years. The possibility of loosing money from ones base salary should be part and parcel of every compensation structure.

There are two good reasons for such a structure.

First, it helps avoid risk where it is not necessary. As Posner mentioned, financial executives are overpaid given that their pay is based on “speculative profits that are not net additions to economic welfare, because they are offset by the losses of the speculators on the other side of successful speculators’ trades.” Raising the specter of loosing money will minimize speculation and force individuals to consider the potential consequences – positive and negative – of their actions.

Second, it is fair. If executives can gain from better performance they should also loose from poor performance. That is the principle that investors accept on the stock market and entrepreneurs accept when they setup companies. Why should executives and employees be treated any different when things go sour on their watch?

© 2009 The Discomfort Zone.