ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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Add quants and traders to that list. For quants, $300k is normal in the 2nd year and the veterans who have been in the game for 10 years or more easily top $1 million per year.
Can someone do a breakdown of the hours involved in these jobs? Can I still spend time with my family while doing them?
I'm not trying to make value judgments with these questions. Rather, to keep my career options open.
I'm surprised that we seem so ignorant about what careers make the most money - I sure hope this get clarified soon.
I'm surprised that we seem so ignorant about what careers make the most money - I sure hope this get clarified soon.
This actually has interesting implication for the notion of compensating differentials.
Can you say that the reason I-Bankers make so much is that people are unable or unwilling to take the job, when in fact many people don't even realize the job pays that much?
Moreover, why don't firms do more to publicize how much their workers make? Is there a public good problem? All Banking firms benefit from more applicants so its not worth it for you to advertise? That seems a stretch for me given the effectiveness of other industry groups.
Perhaps, if more people knew how much a given career pays there would be more incentive to fake your type in order to get a job. My personal sense is that in Management Consulting, type faking is a serious problem that makes the work environment much more political.
Dan -- to make the big bucks on wall street figure on working a 60 to 80 hour work-week essentially every week.
Dan -- Don't count on having a life if you want to make that kind of money practicing law. The hours are about the same as what Spencer predicts for his field. And hours can spike a lot higher.
It's possible to make good money practicing law and to still have a life, if you're cagey and lucky. But not $300K and up.
Two potential explanations:
1) There's no need to further highlight potential earnings in i-banking because these employers already highlight compensation enough to cull the most suitable workers. Evidence: the annual "most desired firms to work for" lists at colleges always have i-banks as 5+ of the top 10 spots. Note that these industries are structured such that it's much more important to get the client work (and get it done right) than it is to be labor cost efficient. It takes roughly the same number of bankers to execute a $10bn M&A transaction as a $1bn transaction. So hiring a lot of people isn't necessary; as long as the banks can get the top 5% of students from the Top 25 colleges, they have plenty to work with.
2)Perhaps very high earners (at more senior levels) in these fields realize that publicizing their earnings would likely result in further taxation, either in the form of IRS taxes or regulations. Evidence: the immediate knee-jerk towards special taxation clauses after the Blackstone and Fortress IPO filings highlighted their partners' incomes.