Throughout the world, U.S. compensation ranks at the top in both pay opportunity and amounts received. But other economically successful countries – including the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and many in the Asia-Pacific region – have different economic and business approaches, including their approach to executive pay. These models fit with the unique culture and corporate governance systems of each country, and all exhibit some pay-for-performance sensitivity.

Many critics of the U.S. executive pay system argue that shareholders would benefit from adopting features from other countries, especially those of the United Kingdom: more performance vesting on stock options and shares; shareholder votes on executive pay; separate chairman and CEO positions; and lower levels of pay opportunity and pay earned.

It makes sense that all economies, and the corporations that constitute a large part of them, should be flexible and adopt successful components from other countries. But just as other countries cannot adopt the U.S. approach in toto, neither can the United States fully adopt other systems. The United States has adopted some of the United Kingdom's practices, primarily performance-based vesting.