Internal pay dispersion and state ownership in Brazilian listed firms
Published:
Oct 13, 2026
Volume:
24
Keywords:
Executive compensation
Internal pay dispersion
State ownership
Top-earner pay slice
Brazil
Abstract
We describe how internally compressed executive pay is in Brazilian listed firms with and without state ownership, using the ratio of the highest individual compensation to the mean compensation of the statutory executive board. The panel covers 4,155 firm-years and 594 firms between 2015 and 2025. Three descriptive facts stand out. Firms with a state stake have more compressed pay, and this difference is about six times larger inside the financial sector than outside it on proportional measures; that sector is excluded by construction from the only prior Brazilian study of this measure. Conditioning on sector by year widens the difference rather than absorbing it, so it is not accounted for by the distribution of state-linked firms across sectors. No within-firm association is detected: with firm fixed effects the coefficient is positive, small and statistically indistinguishable from zero.
How to cite
Martha Regina Meira Bianchi, F. Henrique Castro. Internal pay dispersion and state ownership in Brazilian listed firms. Brazilian Review of Finance, v. 24, n. 1, 2026. p. e202616. DOI: 10.12660/rbfin.v24n1.2026.98994.
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