Of course I didn't say that. I said that compensation is affected by other forces than supply and demand (market value), so that the minimum compensation is hi

Of course I didn't say that. I said that compensation is affected by other forces than supply and demand (market value), so that the minimum compensation is higher than it would be at market value in that country, not that it is higher than in the US. Related to that, the southern European countries don't have individual control over the currency, so prices are higher than they would be if they were in control of the Euro. Salaries have been raised by law (civil service, collective bargaining, state pensions) in order to match prices. As a consequence, those salaries do not correspond to productivity, so employees are expensive, which pushes unemployment up. If you employ people in Italy a main problem will be that your employees have to pay European prices for food and clothing. In order to prevent what many consider abuse, there are laws protecting the minimum compensation you have to offer to them. The workaround for that is not share options, but the black market.