A good resource for the constant questions on compensation:

CFA General
#1

This covers only fixed income analysts, and I haven’t seen something like this for equity. A few interesting items of note: The mean differential betwen an MBA and a CharterHolder was only $2,000 total comp. The median was significantly higher on the CharterHolder side ($500k vs. $400k). These numbers are lower than we expected, but speculation seems to be that there is some self selection (what motivation do the big hitters have to fill this out?) and that there are a lot of smaller sell side shops, that have FI research but are not very active, likely resulting in lower compensation. http://www.iimagazinerankings.com/FICompensation/sell_side.asp?PageID=Sell%20Side

#2

Look at base salary differences between CFA L2 and L3?

#3

Probably some funky outliers, and the fact that both have a 90% CI that puts the low base in the $40k handle also says something is up. Some outliers are really ticking up the std. dev in the data.

#4

…plus the fact that they’re not controlling for many, many obvious causal factors, such as age, experience, education, firm, etc.

#5

They do the best they can, given the sample size. They do break it down by education, by experience, but not by Education & Experience, etc… Its obviously not perfect, but I hoped it would serve to answer at least a few questions on the board, seeing as compensation is typically a big point of discussion.

#6

I hear ya FIAnalyst, and it’s the good info… but in general, i think most compensation surveys are skewed upwards. I think most of the individuals who fill out the surveys are the ones that think they are compensated at market. I believe under compensated and overly compensated individuals typically avoid such surveys, and believe there are a LOT more of the former then the latter.

#7

I would generally agree. I would like to see them break it out by firm size, because it under represents ourselves and other large firms that I am aware of. It probably over represents comp at smaller firms And I certainly wouldn’t use it to try and demand a raise if I thought I was undercompensated…just a general tool to try and add some color to what research gets paid vs. banking peers (where comp numbers are more readily available). Definitely not worth relying on, but some info is better than no info, IMHO.