Characteristics That Make NABE Members Valuable To Their Employers
By Peter Jaquette
Peter B. Jaquette is Manager, Economic Analysis at Weyerhaeuser Company. His primary responsibilities at Weyerhaeuser include market analysis of the containerboard, packaging and paper recycling industries and assessing trends and developments in the economy and how they impact the markets served by Weyerhaeuser. Previously, he was with WEFA and the Atlantic Richfield Company. He has served on the NABE Board of Directors and is a past president of the NABE Los Angeles Chapter and a member of the National Business Economic Issues Council. He received his B.A. degree from Swarthmore College and his M.A. from Stanford University.
NABE has been regularly conducting a salary survey of its members for more than 20 years. More sophisticated statistical analysis of the salary survey, however, has been performed infrequently. The regression equation for NABE members’ total compensation reported here and implemented on the NABE website provides a tool to estimate compensation as a function of the characteristics measured in the NABE Salary Survey. The significant explanatory variables, functional form, and goodness of fit are consistent with both earlier research on NABE members’ compensation and the more general literature. Since there are many characteristics that influence compensation that are not measured in the NABE Salary Survey —such as work effort, communications and other job-related skills, and good luck —the equation’s results should not be viewed as a precise estimate of what any one person “should” be paid. But if compensation is closely related to marginal value product, then the regression results provide an indication of what characteristics make NABE members valuable to their employers.
By Peter Jaquette