The four factors that decide how we feel about income inequality

Linking pay to the share price can also have serious and sudden unfortunate consequences

Sometimes it is hard to nail down exactly how we feel about disparities between incomes, but emotions certainly run higher after a financial crisis and a few years of austerity. We might be furious that scandal-hit CEOs walk away with multi-million dollar packages but we can feel impotent in the face of the “market forces” we are told dictate such things. We might find easier targets among public servants, from GPs to councillors and head teachers, who have their “generous packages” revealed.

The academic literature on what people know about pay, and what they think is fair pay,