Executive compensation of several million euros a year is still more shocking today in Sweden, Germany, France, Japan, and Italy than in the United States or Britain. It has not always been this way—far from it: recall that in the 1950s and 1960s the United States was more egalitarian than France, especially in regard to the wage hierarchy. But it has been this way since 1980, and all signs are that this change in senior management compensation has played a key role in the evolution of wage inequalities around the world.
