"I think there are some important economic fundamentals behind it," explains Dr. Walden, a North Carolina Cooperative Extension specialist.

"First of all, a CEO is going to get paid based on the importance of their decisions, and those decisions of many CEOs, I think, have become more important for a couple of reasons: Number one is the global economy. Many companies are operating in a global marketplace, and so companies have greater opportunities to expand and bring in revenues. And so the average CEO, his or her decisions can have greater influence. And, of course, as that is the case, their pay is going to go up.

"The second element in our new economy is that our economy has become more competitive. We don't have any more really protected companies and protected industries," he says. "It's really an economic free-for-all out there. Again, what that means is that the decisions of individual CEOs, on average, are more important. Again that would make their pay go up.

"And then thirdly when you are looking at the difference between CEO pay and worker pay, it is the case again with our global economy that workers ... are in competition really around the world, and that has worked to depress, to some, extent factory workers' pay. And so that has worked to expand the difference between CEO pay and factory worker pay."