I think an underexplored reason for high CEO pay is outright corruption. We don't really question why a Russian oligarch is a billionaire. It's not business sk

I think an underexplored reason for high CEO pay is outright corruption. We don't really question why a Russian oligarch is a billionaire. It's not business skill, it's using their authority to enrich themselves directly: corruption. In the USA we don't think of ourselves as having such brazenly corrupt oligarchs, and yet the people in analogous positions are making similar outrageous amounts of money. Some of them have been caught in outright fraud and corruption, e.g. Trump. More of them are probably outright corrupt, and have not been caught yet. But also, even the ones who are not corrupt - their positions give them the ability to earn money by corruption, so perhaps the wage has to be competitive so that they won't be tempted. If I'm directly controlling $1 billion of purchase orders, and making a salary of $500,000 a year, I'm going to have a pretty strong incentive to send $100 million of that to a buddy for a 5% kickback. If I'm making $40 million a year, eh why risk it.