Vattenfall is a Swedish-owned international electricity and heat supplier. In recent years, it has become the fourth-largest generator of electricity and the largest producer of heat in Europe Vattenfall is a public limited company, shares of which are owned by the Swedish government.

There is a debate on whether executive pay reflects rent extraction due to “managerialpower” or is the result of arms-length bargaining in a principal-agent framework. In this paperwe offer a test of the managerial power hypothesis by empirically examining the CEOcompensation of U.S. public...