The University of Oregon is now paying its football coach ~$5M a year, including bonuses. The State of Oregon pays its Governor $98.6K. This Ted Sickinger story shows Kitzhaber was in money trouble, and suggests the pressure may have led him to support his fiance’s sleazy consulting deals. (Yes, I know there is no connection between pay for the UO coach and the OR governor, except insofar as Phil Knight seems to have his finger on both.)
As it turns out, the subject of civil-servant pay and corruption has been studied a fair amount, albeit with inconclusive results: Here’s one recent paper:
This also looks relevant: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387801001390
This paper presents what is to our knowledge the first empirical estimate of the effect of pay in the civil service on corruption. First, we show that theory is ambiguous on the relationship between civil-service pay and corruption. Then, we examine the issue using a new data set on wages for low-income countries. We find evidence of a statistically and economically significant relationship between relative civil-service pay and corruption in regressions based on cross-country averages, where we control for a wide array of variables. The relationship implies that a rather large increase in wages is required to eradicate corruption solely by raising wages.
Let’s try paying the governor 0.1667 Helfrichs — that’s 500K, give or take — and see what happens.
UOwe football coach had a better year than the Gov….
As Babe Ruth said of Herbert Hoover, when he was paid more than Hoover’s $75K!