Is more information better when it’s about pay? Could such pay transparency improve income inequality?

CEOs in U.S. publicly traded firms know exactly what their peers are paid, and CEO pay has not suffered for it. But while "transparency creates pressure for more equality within a group” says Linda Barrington, ICS Managing Director, it won’t likely improve equality between people in very different jobs or socioeconomic groups.

Barrington’s comments were reported in The Atlantic’s recent article “The case for making wages public,” written by Atlantic associate editor Daniel Indiviglio. The article also presents results of recent University of California research on pay disclosure. David Card, one of the study’s authors, recently spoke about this work at a lecture sponsored by Cornell's Institute for the Advancement of Economics and hosted by ILR's Department of Labor Economics.

Read the complete discussion in The Atlantic.

Read about David Card’s recent ILR lecture and his transparency study
(http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/ICS/news/03292011-davidcardcompensation.html)