References

1 Value Is Made Together

Alchian, A. A., & Demsetz, H. (1972). Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization. The American Economic Review, 62(5), 777–795.
Price, C. C., & Edwards, K. A. (2020). Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018. RAND Corporation, WR-A516-1. Summarised in A $2.5 Trillion Question: What If Incomes Grew Like GDP Did? https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2020/10/a-25-trillion-question-what-if-incomes-grew-like-gdp.html
Chetty, R., Grusky, D., Hell, M., Hendren, N., Manduca, R., & Narang, J. (2017). The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940. Science, 356(6336), 398–406.
Lazonick, W. (2014). Profits Without Prosperity. Harvard Business Review, 92(9), 46–55.
Guyton, J., Langetieg, P., Reck, D., Risch, M., & Zucman, G. (2021). Tax Evasion at the Top of the Income Distribution: Theory and Evidence. NBER Working Paper 28542.

2 Why the Case for Top Pay Fails

Economic Policy Institute. (2024). Report on chief executive compensation at the 350 largest U.S. public firms in 2023. https://files.epi.org/uploads/288934.pdf
Gabaix, X., & Landier, A. (2008). Why Has CEO Pay Increased So Much? The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(1), 49–100.
Frydman, C., & Saks, R. E. (2010). Executive Compensation: A New View from a Long-Term Perspective, 1936–2005. The Review of Financial Studies, 23(5), 2099–2138.
Bertrand, M., & Mullainathan, S. (2001). Are CEOs Rewarded for Luck? The Ones Without Principals Are. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(3), 901–932.
Garvey, G. T., & Milbourn, T. T. (2006). Asymmetric Benchmarking in Compensation: Executives Are Rewarded for Good Luck but Not Penalized for Bad. Journal of Financial Economics, 82, 197–225.
Apple Inc. (2023). Proxy statement for the 2023 annual meeting of shareholders. Reported in: Apple CEO Tim Cook Taking Substantial Pay Cut in 2023 After Earning Nearly $100 Million Last Year. (2023, January 12). MacRumors. https://www.macrumors.com/2023/01/12/tim-cook-taking-pay-cut-in-2023/
Fitza, M. A. (2014). The Use of Variance Decomposition in the Investigation of CEO Effects: How Large Must the CEO Effect Be to Rule Out Chance? Strategic Management Journal, 35(12). For the reply: Quigley, T. J., & Graffin, S. D. (2017). Reaffirming the CEO Effect Is Significant and Much Larger than Chance: A Comment on Fitza (2014). Strategic Management Journal, 38(3).
Boeing says no severance package for ousted CEO Muilenburg. (2020, January). Agence France-Presse. https://techxplore.com/news/2020-01-boeing-severance-package-ousted-ceo.html
Bizjak, J., Lemmon, M., & Nguyen, T. (2011). Are All CEOs Above Average? An Empirical Analysis of Compensation Peer Groups and Pay Design. Journal of Financial Economics, 100(3), 538–555.
Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. (2024). 2024 Proxy Season Review: Compensation-Related Matters. https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2024/09/19/2024-proxy-season-review-compensation-related-matters

3 The Same Dollar

Saez, E., & Zucman, G. (2016). Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131(2), 519–578. The figures are from the authors’ summary, Exploding Wealth Inequality in the United States. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/exploding-wealth-inequality-united-states
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (2025). Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2024. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2024-executive-summary.htm
Fagereng, A., Guiso, L., Malacrino, D., & Pistaferri, L. (2020). Heterogeneity and Persistence in Returns to Wealth. Econometrica, 88(1), 115–170.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (2023). Review of the “Accredited Investor” Definition under the Dodd-Frank Act. Staff report, December 2023.
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Distributional Financial Accounts, second quarter of 2026. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01134
Harris, R. S., Jenkinson, T., & Kaplan, S. N. (2014). Private Equity Performance: What Do We Know? The Journal of Finance, 69(5), 1851–1882.

4 Why Equity Does Not Fix It

Carta. Real Startup Ownership Data: Founders, Employees and Investors. https://carta.com/data/linkedin-startup-ownership-seed-to-late-stage/ and Employee Option Pool Size. https://carta.com/data/newsletter-employee-option-pool-size/
Hall, R. E., & Woodward, S. E. (2010). The Burden of the Nondiversifiable Risk of Entrepreneurship. The American Economic Review, 100(3), 1163–1194.
Gornall, W., & Strebulaev, I. A. (2020). Squaring Venture Capital Valuations with Reality. Journal of Financial Economics, 135(1), 120–143.
Carta. (2023). Startup Employees Were Less Likely to Exercise Stock Options in Q1. https://carta.com/data/stock-options-exercise-q1-2023/
FINRA Investor Education Foundation. (2025). National Financial Capability Study, 2024 wave. https://www.finra.org/media-center/newsreleases/2025/finra-foundation-releases-state-state-financial-knowledge-findings
Schwab Stock Plan Services. (2018). Equity Compensation Plan Participant Study. Survey of 1,000 plan participants, July 2018.

5 What a Role Is Worth

Levanon, A., England, P., & Allison, P. (2009). Occupational Feminization and Pay: Assessing Causal Dynamics Using 1950–2000 U.S. Census Data. Social Forces, 88(2), 865–891.
Kinder, M., & Stateler, L. (2021). Essential Workers Deserve a Minimum Wage Increase. Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/essential-workers-deserve-minimum-wage-increase/
Pew Research Center. (2025). Gender Pay Gap in U.S. Has Narrowed Slightly over 2 Decades. https://www.pewresearch.org/topic/gender-lgbtq/economics-work-gender/gender-pay-gap/
Pew Research Center. (2023). The Enduring Grip of the Gender Pay Gap. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-enduring-grip-of-the-gender-pay-gap/
Bowles, H. R., Babcock, L., & Lai, L. (2007). Social Incentives for Gender Differences in the Propensity to Initiate Negotiations: Sometimes It Does Hurt to Ask. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 103(1), 84–103.

6 What a Fair System Must Do

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Current Population Survey, annual averages for 2024: unemployed persons by duration of unemployment. The median was 9.6 weeks. https://www.bls.gov/cps/data/aa2024/cpsaat30.htm

8 Salary

Living wage data sourced from the Living Wage Institute via https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/48453. Accessed on November 12, 2026. The figure is for one adult with no children, and the page was last updated on February 15, 2026.
Glasmeier, A. K., & Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Living Wage Calculator: What is a living wage and how is it estimated? https://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/methodology
Dreyfus, S. E., & Dreyfus, H. L. (1980). A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition. Operations Research Center, University of California, Berkeley.
Benner, P. (1984). From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice. Addison-Wesley.
Buffer. Transparent salaries. https://buffer.com/salaries. See also Buffer. (2024). Introducing our Open Salary System: Reflecting on a Decade of Transparent Salaries at Buffer. https://buffer.com/resources/salary-system/
Bennedsen, M., Simintzi, E., Tsoutsoura, M., & Wolfenzon, D. (2022). Do Firms Respond to Gender Pay Gap Transparency? The Journal of Finance, 77(4), 2051–2091.
In this Spanish town, capitalism actually works for the workers. (2024, May 13). The Christian Science Monitor. https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2024/0513/income-inequality-capitalism-mondragon-corporation. See also Co-operative approaches to pay. Co-op News. https://www.thenews.coop/co-operative-approaches-to-pay/

9 Futures

Doucouliagos, H., Laroche, P., Kruse, D. L., & Stanley, T. D. (2020). Is Profit Sharing Productive? A Meta-Regression Analysis. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 58(2), 364–395. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12483

10 Benefits and Rollover

U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau. (2023). Childcare Prices in Local Areas: Initial Findings from the National Database of Childcare Prices. https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WB/NDCP/508_WB_IssueBrief-NDCP-20230213.pdf
AARP and National Alliance for Caregiving. (2020). Caregiving in the U.S. 2020. https://www.caregiving.org/caregiving-in-the-us-2020/

11 Ownership and the Council

Co-opLaw.org. Subchapter T Patronage Taxation. https://co-oplaw.org/subchapter-t-patronage-taxation/. The page cites Revenue Ruling 71-439, which treats distributions to members by hours worked as patronage dividends, and Puget Sound Plywood v. Commissioner (1965) on deducting them.
John Lewis Partnership. The history of the Partnership. https://www.jlpjobs.com/blog/the-history-of-the-partnership/
Arup. Our history. https://www.arup.com/about-us/history/
Finance Act 2014 (UK), Schedule 37. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/26/schedule/37. For the United States: Rutgers Curriculum Library for Employee Ownership. Employee Ownership Trusts and Perpetual Purpose Trusts in the United States. https://cleo.rutgers.edu/articles/employee-ownership-trusts-and-perpetual-purpose-trusts-in-the-united-states/

12 Capital

Federal Reserve Banks. (2026). 2026 Report on Employer Firms: Findings from the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey. https://www.fedsmallbusiness.org/2026-report-on-employer-firms
RSF Social Finance. Organically Grown Company’s Groundbreaking Move to New Ownership Structure. https://rsfsocialfinance.org/news/organically-grown-companys-groundbreaking-move-to-new-ownership-structure/. See also Berkeley Haas Case Series. (2024). Perpetual Purpose Trust and Organically Grown Company: Rethinking Corporate Ownership for the Future. https://cases.haas.berkeley.edu/2024/07/purpose

13 Hiring and Contractors

Ward, B. (1958). The Firm in Illyria: Market Syndicalism. The American Economic Review, 48(4), 566–589.
Craig, B., & Pencavel, J. (1992). The Behavior of Worker Cooperatives: The Plywood Companies of the Pacific Northwest. The American Economic Review, 82(5), 1083–1105.
Burdín, G., & Dean, A. (2009). New evidence on wages and employment in worker cooperatives compared with capitalist firms. Journal of Comparative Economics, 37(4), 517–533. The findings described here were read in the working-paper version: Instituto de Economía, Universidad de la República, DT 02/09.
Dube, A., & Kaplan, E. (2010). Does Outsourcing Reduce Wages in the Low-Wage Service Occupations? Evidence from Janitors and Guards. ILR Review, 63(2), 287–306.
Goldschmidt, D., & Schmieder, J. F. (2017). The Rise of Domestic Outsourcing and the Evolution of the German Wage Structure. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 132(3).

14 Adopting FairShare

ICAEW. (2024). An introduction to employee ownership trusts. https://www.icaew.com/technical/tax/tax-faculty/taxline/articles/2024/an-introduction-to-employee-ownership-trusts
Blasi, J., & Kruse, D. (2024). Employee Ownership and ESOPs: What We Know from Recent Research. Aspen Institute. https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Employee-Ownership-and-ESOPs-What-We-Know-from-Recent-Research-1.pdf

16 Objections

26 U.S.C. § 162(a)(1).
Freeman, R. B., Kruse, D. L., & Blasi, J. R. (2010). Worker Responses to Shirking under Shared Capitalism. In Shared Capitalism at Work. University of Chicago Press. https://www.nber.org/papers/w14227