Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Working Knowledge
Business Research for Business Leaders
  • Browse All Articles
  • Popular Articles
  • Cold Call Podcast
  • Managing the Future of Work Podcast
  • About Us
  • Book
  • Leadership
  • Marketing
  • Finance
  • Management
  • Entrepreneurship
  • All Topics...
  • Topics
    • COVID-19
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Finance
    • Gender
    • Globalization
    • Leadership
    • Management
    • Negotiation
    • Social Enterprise
    • Strategy
  • Sections
    • Book
    • Podcasts
    • HBS Case
    • In Practice
    • Lessons from the Classroom
    • Op-Ed
    • Research & Ideas
    • Research Event
    • Sharpening Your Skills
    • What Do You Think?
    • Working Paper Summaries
  • Browse All
    Are the Most Talented Employees the Highest Paid? Yes—If They’re Bankers
    15 Sep 2014Research & Ideas

    Are the Most Talented Employees the Highest Paid? Yes—If They’re Bankers

    by Carmen Nobel
    A recent study by Claire Célérier and Boris Vallée finds that the French finance industry compensates employees largely according to how talented they are. Other high-paying industries? Not so much.
    LinkedIn
    Email

    Job seekers who want to be paid commensurate with their talent level might want to pursue a career in high finance.

    Recent research finds that the finance industry compensates employees largely according to how talented they are. Other high-paying industries? Not so much.

    The findings are detailed in the paper Are Bankers Worth Their Pay? Evidence from a Talent Measure by Boris Vallée, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, and Claire Célérier, an assistant professor at the University of Zurich.

    “What we are saying is that yes, they are worth their pay, at least in economic terms”

    The research, based in France, was prompted by an ongoing regulatory debate within the European Union. "In Europe, there has been intense discussion about taxing high incomes in general, and bankers in specific," Vallée explains.

    In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the EU passed a rule banning bankers from receiving annual bonuses exceeding more than twice their fixed pay. Lawyers for the United Kingdom actively oppose the rule, which is set to go into effect in 2015. In the meantime, several major banks have responded by increasing executives' weekly cash allowances, in lieu of a bonus. Now the European Banking Authority is looking into whether those allowances are allowable.

    "It's a very well-known fact that bankers are paid better than other workers," Vallée says. "We wanted to explain the reasons for the finance premium."

    There has been little research on the direct link between measurable talent and its impact on wages. In part, Vallée and Célérier wanted to study talent to challenge the idea that bankers are paid according to how hard they work.

    "That's silly," says Vallée, who worked in investment banking at Deutsche Bank in London before pursuing his doctoral studies at HEC Paris. "I've been a banker. I know they work hard. But if a banker works 20 percent harder than someone in another occupation, it doesn't explain getting paid ten times more."

    The dearth of research on the wage/talent link was connected to the fact that talent is difficult to measure, Vallée explains. To that end, he and Célérier set out to quantify talent. To do so, they capitalized on data from French engineering schools.

    Measuring Talent

    In France, students are selected for engineering programs based solely on their national ranking in a standard competitive exam covering a wide variety of subjects. The exam includes more than 80 hours of written testing as well as a series of oral tests. Most students spend two years preparing in dedicated exam-training institutions that are highly selective. Some whiz kids take the exams after only a year of training, while others need to study for three or more years.

    Vallée and Célérier developed a dataset that divided France's 240 engineering schools into nine sections, ranked by selectivity. Group 1 included the most selective schools such as École Polytechnique, which accepts only the top 3 percent of applicants. Group 9 included the least selective schools.

    Students accepted into top programs generally have the choice of going to any school they like, but usually choose the most selective school that accepts them. (Education is free in France, so expense is not a factor.)

    Thus, the researchers gauged the students' relative talent based on which school they had attended. They also looked at age at graduation, reasoning that a student who was accepted at a top school after only a year of exam training was probably more talented than a student who needed three years of training.

    Next, Vallée and Célérier studied the results of a salary survey conducted by the French Engineering and Scientist Council, a network of alumni organizations that includes 144 of the country's 240 engineering schools. Respondents shared their latest yearly salary, current industry, position, and employer. The researchers looked at 324,761 survey responses from 1983 to 2011.

    In France, students who complete graduate engineering programs often pursue careers in lucrative fields including chemistry, oil, consulting, and, yes, finance. Thus, the researchers were able to compare how various industries connected wages to talent.

    Scalability Matters

    The data showed that the finance industry rewarded talented workers to a far greater extent than did other industries. Bankers who had gone to top engineering schools made vastly more money than those who had gone to less selective schools. This gap was much larger than in other sectors such as the oil or chemistry industry.

    In 2011, even in the wake of the financial crisis, "returns to talent" were three times higher in the finance industry than in the economy as a whole. (This held true even in cases where the French engineers pursued careers in other countries, including the United States and United Kingdom.) "Having graduated from a school one notch higher in terms of selectivity induces a 2.5% average wage premium, versus a 9% relative premium in the finance industry," the researchers write.

    For example, average wages for "low-talent" workers were similar in finance to "low-talent" wages in the oil industry. Among the most talented workers, finance industry wages were 40 percent higher than oil industry wages.

    "Oil still pays very well," Vallée says, "but the wage sensitivity to your talent is much lower."

    The data showed that the finance industry rewarded talented workers to a far greater extent than did other industries.

    So getting back to the title of the paper: Are bankers worth their pay?

    "The title of the paper is deliberately provocative," says Vallée. "And the findings are provocative, too. Because what we are saying is that yes, they are worth their pay, at least in economic terms. Because their talent is highly scalable in finance, they are paid accordingly to the profits their talent generates."

    According to salary survey results, the majority (65 percent) of engineers in the finance industry are compensated with variable pay, meaning their income varies according to how well they perform. In finance, performance is measured in money. Make more money, get more money.

    The findings indicate that if Europe wants its most talented bankers to stay and make money, it may be economically unwise to regulate their salaries.

    "If you put a cap on compensation of talented people, then you stop this mechanism, and you run the risk of having your company be less profitable," Vallée says. "You're putting a friction on a competitive market that's doing what it's meant to do."

    He notes, though, that market forces may excessively inflate returns to talent in the finance industry. "When rewarding talent, banks tend to focus only on the short-run productivity of bankers, often overlooking long-run risk-taking," Vallée says. "Banks may also neglect tasks that are hard to monitor, such as risk management. Overall, this may harm the stability of the financial sector."

    Implications For The Talent Pool

    It's not so easy for other industries to offer such competitive compensation packages for talented workers. "Scalability differs a lot across sectors," Vallée explains. "In finance, it's very easy to give you more capital if you make more money. Whereas if you're, let's say, an oil refinery manager, you're not going to get a second refinery next month just because you've done well this month. And even if you're the best wall builder in the world, you're not going to build a thousand walls in a day. It's just much easier to leverage talent in finance."

    The research might raise concerns that talent is not spread adequately across industries. The wage premium for talented financiers has increased dramatically and continuously since the 1980s—and increasingly has outpaced the wage premium in other industries. The data show that the percentage of trained engineers holding jobs in finance has grown from 1.8 percent in the 1980s to 2.3 percent in the 2000s. Meanwhile, the percentage of engineers in the oil industry has shrunk from 3.1 percent in the 1980s to .5 percent in the 2000s, and in the chemistry industry from 3.5 percent to 1.8 percent in the 1980s and in the 2000s, respectively.

    "We're observing what the market does," Vallée says. "And what the market seems to do is take the most talented engineers and allocate them to finance."

    Comments
      • Anonymous
      It's like a soccer player in one of the major European leagues! It makes a lot of economic sense. Your contract is commensurate with your proven and anticipated value.
      • Andrew Kahr
      • Alumnus (and former faculty), HBS
      The conclusions reported here are nonsense. French business believes that value of a person is predicted by the school he attended. (American business puts much less valuational weight on this factor.) Finance pay more. Hence the people who have the most choice of jobs, those from the top schools, tend to take the finance jobs.

      To say the very least, this does not prove that they are the most talented.
      • Ken Wilson, HGSE 1951-54
      • Research Scientist, ETS, Retired
      " . . . We're observing what the market does," Vall?e says. "And what the market seems to do is take the most talented engineers and allocate them to finance."

      This reader's take: Based on the summary of findings of this study by Claire Celerier and Boris Vallee, as reported here by Ms. Nobel, it would appear that among generally talented and highly-selected engineering program grad-uates in France, the relatively few (less than 3 percent) who choose atypical careers in the financial sector earn more (in wages plus bonuses), on the average, than their counterparts, 97 percent of whom choose traditional engineering-related career paths in sectors of the economy in which making "things" rather than money, per se, is the central job-objective.

      It isn't clear from the brief summary , whether study findings were consistent with the following working hypothesis: " Among engineering graduates who choose traditional engineering positions, those judged to be "better at the job", typically, tend to earn higher average salaries than their less-well-rated counterparts".

      Hard to resist posting a comment, given the welcome (recently introduced) opportunity to do so.
      • Maria May
      • contributor, Netzfrauen
      Given the havoc that bankers have wreaked on the rest of society, and are poised to inflict again, maybe the most "talented" should be actively discouraged by drastic salary cuts. After all, their talent is applied to taking resources they did not make away from the rest of us, instead of making new things, as they would if they had e.g. become engineers.
      • Ellen Hertzmark
      • biostatistician, hsph
      consider the possibility that in other fields, other aspects of intelligence/talent, such as interpersonal intelligence, are more important than in finance, so that the 'hard' skills that determine placement are not necessarily the skills that make one good in some of these other fields.
      • Boris Vallee
      • Author, Harvard Business School
      @Andrew: I encourage you to read the paper, which adresses the (legitimate) concerns about composition effect/endogenous matching you are raising. The papers also makes the case for how relevant this measure is (especially by comparison to the US selection process, which is very different in nature).

      @Ken: What we show in the paper is not that engineers are better paid in Finance (which is already established), but that the most talented engineers are much more paid in Finance than in other sectors, in other words that the
      sensitivity of your pay to your talent is higher in Finance than in other sectors.

      I think I understand where you are coming from when you suggest looking at the actual performance as a measure of talent. The issue with this approach is that performance differs a lot across occupation positions (and between industries), which makes it almost impossible to draw a comparison. Operational performance can also be polluted by many different things, for instance a trader on oil during an oil boom will perform really well, without necessarily being talented.

      This is kind of a philosophical debate on what talent is, but to have a rigorous analysis we needed to look at ex ante talent, or potential if you prefer.
      • LS
      • Postdoc, HMS
      That's interesting to think though whether to make more money if you are a banker has value at all. It's not that you have produced anything. Yes, you made more money, some abstract commodity which value is determined by somewhat obscure market mechanisms.
      • john werneken
      Silly discussion.

      Mobs might be stupid but most individuals are not.

      Those who pay are not idiots and neither are those who choose top seek higher financial rewards.

      Equality is a lie.
      • Terrence Goldman
      • Research Scientist, retired, Los Alamos National Laboratory
      "We wanted to explain the reasons for the finance premium." -- Too bad they didn't want to examine whether the finance premium exists for rationale reasons. A scientist would not presume that there are valid reasons. Scalability may be the reason for the relatively larger reward with capability, but as noted it also affords for larger errors.
      • AB
      • Postdoc, Harvard University
      The data presented indicate two things: (1) that those with more elite education tend to be in higher positions in whatever industry they join, and (2) that the banking industry has one of the largest wage disparities.
      No data is discussed related to the question are those top paid individuals worth it. In the slave society of the American South, the individuals with the most elite education were often plantation owners, who were vastly higher paid than their slaves. Applying the metrics here, elite education = talent, and high returns on talent = "economically worth it", one would also conclude the plantation owners deserved their high pay and were economically worth it.

      If you want to argue that companies are less profitable when this wage disparity is smaller,
      "If you put a cap on compensation of talented people, then you stop this mechanism, and you run the risk of having your company be less profitable,"
      one should do so with data. It appears the historical data argue quite the reverse -- during historical periods where top income bracket taxes were much higher (80-90% instead of 40%) top executives were paid proportionally much less, but there is no indication of loss of productivity in the companies of those times. Thomas Piketty presents a much more data argument of this claim. Socially, a return on talent is good thing, -- society doesn't want to put a stop to talent correlated compensation entirely. But the marginal increase in pay should be in step with the marginal increase in talent, and in a volatile sector like banking I think it is very hard to accurately measure the effect of a small difference in talent because of the the high stochastic variability in the market. Meanwhile, it historically doesn't look that banking sectors collapse due to a sudden decrease in talent of top executives when governments impose taxes that reduce the premium on talent.
      • PETER OLORUNFEMI
      • MD/CEO, PETER MARITIME CONSULTING SERVICES LTD
      I am happy that this type of study is being done to show which sector pays more in terms of paying for performance since the more talented you are the better your performance.

      I also believe that bankers that are not doing well are most likely to earn worst salaries over the years as their employers may not increase their salaries if their performance are not good enough. They may even lose their jobs faster than other profession.
      • Steve
      • entrepreneur, Many
      To understand banker pay you need to understand why sales people are paid well. The close someone is to revenue (or $) - the more they get paid as their compensation can be rationalized as a cost for getting that revenue. The risk of swapping a lower cost resource isn't worth when the scale of the revenue is considered.

      Next consider the old saying "timing, territory, and talent - in that order - determine the financial success of a sales rep". Timing - where you are in a market cycle for a given client, territory - is the prospect in your territory, and last is talent. So someone leveraging their pedigree to get the best territory in a give period of time - say working with the frackers for Goldman Sachs while it consolidates over the next few years - is going have a much better outcome even if they are less talented than many others in other territories/markets.

      In closing - bankers are just high-end sales reps. Since the product they are selling have big $$ associated with them....they get paid a lot as it is rationalized as a small amount of a much larger purchase. The absolute size of the compensation though is undeserved relative to equally skilled folks that happen to be selling things of lower dollar value.

      Yes bankers work hard - but that is merely a sorting function to prove you really want to get the plum territory in a plum market cycle.
      • Hugh Quick
      • home, none
      Matt, the Daily Telegraph cartoonist drew a pertinent cartoon recently. A boss was telling an employee that he wasn't allowed to pay him a bonus but he was offering a big reward for the recovery of his briefcase, which was lying obviously in front of the desk.
      • Aim
      • Drilling Supervisor, Crescent Petroleum
      1 - Boris, you must define talent as an investment banker would; at least for the context of this article.

      2 - To me this article concludes that financial industry draws "talent" for wrong incentives leaving other industries at large with bygone opportunities of sales of actual products.

      It would be prudent to integrate your study with import/export relationship, consumer confidence, FDI and government expenditure and corresponding rise of "talent" in financial engineering society during the same years. Furthermore you may have to model your study by keeping "talent" in financial industry at a constant level and analyze the effects on GDP.

      Only then can you draw conclusion about economy: "The findings indicate that if Europe wants its most talented bankers to stay and make money, it may be economically unwise to regulate their salaries."
      • don yansen
      • consultant in development, Knowledge & Learning for Development
      Interesting article for starting a discussion. Not having read the original paper, I do not think this excerpt supports the most obvious take away. "Making more money" should not be equated with talent as has been demonstrated in American business countless times and is documented in Thomas Piketty's latest work. The many good comments so far point out the flaws in this assumption for French Society and others.
      I like Maria May's-careful who you reward.
      • Eustace Gibrilla
      • Student, Fourah Bay College
      In the Little research, I discovered that in France, talent measured according to the School a person attends. I beg to differ because in most cases the students can perform better in school but when it comes to delivering the actual goods, they are proven unequal to the task. Talent can be discovered and developed not according to the school you attended. Rather a more talented person can discover and develop his talent based on the effort he/she puts in developing and exhibiting it. This can be possible anywhere. What would we say about 'Bill Gate'. Can his talent be measured based on the school he attended? I believe its his effort in developing and exhibiting his talent that made his one of the most valuable men on earth. He still makes more money than could imagine. You can still attend to the best school and not deliver in terms of making money in the finance industry.
      • Ganiyu Ogunleye
      • Managing Consultan, Jaffa Consulting
      It is a perverse incentive to reward talent for short term performance without a mechanism for sanctions against subsequent losses that could arise from the actions or bad judgement ot the talented engineers. The study could go a step further to address in-built mechanism to moderate adverse consequences for the banks/employer.
      Trending
        • 08 Sep 2022
        • Book

        Gen Xers and Millennials, It’s Time To Lead. Are You Ready?

        • 28 Mar 2023
        • Research & Ideas

        The FDA’s Speedy Drug Approvals Are Safe: A Win-Win for Patients and Pharma Innovation

        • 25 Jan 2022
        • Research & Ideas

        More Proof That Money Can Buy Happiness (or a Life with Less Stress)

        • 25 Feb 2019
        • Research & Ideas

        How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence

        • 14 Mar 2023
        • In Practice

        What Does the Failure of Silicon Valley Bank Say About the State of Finance?

    Boris Vallee
    Boris Vallee
    Torstein Hagen Associate Professor of Business Administration
    Contact
    Send an email
    → More Articles
    Find Related Articles
    • Human Resources
    • Compensation and Benefits
    • Talent and Talent Management
    • Banking
    • Europe

    Sign up for our weekly newsletter

    Interested in improving your business? Learn about fresh research and ideas from Harvard Business School faculty.
    This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
    ǁ
    Campus Map
    Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
    Baker Library | Bloomberg Center
    Soldiers Field
    Boston, MA 02163
    Email: Editor-in-Chief
    →Map & Directions
    →More Contact Information
    • Make a Gift
    • Site Map
    • Jobs
    • Harvard University
    • Trademarks
    • Policies
    • Accessibility
    • Digital Accessibility
    Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College