It is Presidents Day or, as we used to call it when I was growing up, the Monday between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln's birthday. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at pay for world leaders. Notice, I did not say an instructive look at pay. Like everything else that gets churned through the political process, the pay for Chief Country Officers (CCO) does not seem to be based on any set of consistent underlying principals.
It is hard finding out what CCOs make. Apparantly, there is nothing like a Mercer sponsored survey of CCO compensation. If you look hard enough you can find out the pay and perks for the world's democracies. But, it is impossible to find it out what people like Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe)
or Kim Yong Il (North Korea) make. I'm guessing they are paid well above the 99th percentile of CCO compensation as there is no oversight by what we would term "independent" directors.
It is well known that the US president ($400k) makes far less than what a CEO of a Fortune 500 company makes - even if we don't count the free room & board, personal use of a 747 and top-of-the-line home security system. This relationship between public and private compensation at the top level applies throughout the democratic world. In a December 2007 Forbes article on the subject, Steve McGookin, notes that Gordon Brown, the current UK Prime Minister ($375,000) makes less than 10% of a typical large-company UK CEO and this percentage, while on the low side, is not unusual in Western Europe. The same article notes that President Sarkozy of France, for example only makes about $350k.
A major determinent of CEO compensation is company size. This is not the case in the CCO world. Take for example, the prime minister of Ireland. Bertie Ahern makes $434,000 managing a country with a GDP of 187.5 billion. Compare that with Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel who makes $318,000 managing a country with a GDP of $2.8 trillion or the Prime Minister of Japan (GDP of $4.3 trillion) who makes about $355,000.
The prime minister of Nepal (GDP of 30.7 billion) and Vladimir Putin of Russia (GDP of $2.1 trillion) make $3,600 and $81,000, respectively which are, I guess, the the exceptions that prove the non-rules.
How about pay-for-performance? A Wikipedia article on Presidents shows that William Taft would be by far the highest paid US President. 
His $75,000 annual salary back in the early 20th century would be equivalent to over $1.7 million in 2007 dollars. Just prior to the 100% increase in presidential salary in 2001, Bill Clinton would be among the lowest paid Presidents. His $200,000 salary in 2000 would be worth about $260,000 in 2007 dollars. George Washington's $25,000 salary in 1789 would be worth $566,000 today.
No comment on the politics. With honor to anyone who takes on, or tries to take on, the CCO responsibility, happy Presidents Day.
