"Why CEO Pay Keeps Going Up." The New Yorker

"Transparent pricing has perverse effects in other fields. In a host of recent cases, public disclosure of the prices that hospitals charge for various procedures has ended up driving prices up rather than down. And the psychological causes in both situations seem similar. We tend to be uneasy about bargaining in situations where the stakes are very high: do you want the guy doing your neurosurgery, or running your company, to be offering discounts?...Sunlight is supposed to be the best disinfectant. But there's something naive about the new S.E.C. rule, which presumes that full disclosure will embarrass companies enough to restrain executive pay. As Elson told me, "People who can ask to be paid a hundred million dollars are beyond embarrassment."" James Surowiecki in The New Yorker

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Blow-up of following graph at: 
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/09/business/businessspecial/pay.graphic.jpg