It's Good to Be the CEO

But a bigger problem with the Roundtable's report, say pay critics, lies in how the data are compiled and analyzed.

According to the Roundtable report, CEO pay has risen about 9.6% annually over the last 10 years, which is roughly in line with the rise in their companies' market caps, which have grown at about an 8.8% annual clip.

But in his own research, Bebchuk found a much less-direct link between pay and market capitalization. In other words, if a company's valuation tripled, you typically wouldn't see its executive's pay triple as well.

Instead of lumping together a bunch of different companies of different sizes, Bebchuk argues that a more apt comparison is to show what a CEO of a company with a particular market capitalization has been paid over time.

"The facts are that, at present, the CEO of, say, a $10 billion company is paid considerably more than what the CEO of a $10 billion company was paid in 1995," Bebchuk said.

Ultimately, compensation is about particular companies and individual performances, says Hodgson. By lumping everyone's pay together, the Roundtable's report smoothes out the rough edges. So, companies that paid their CEOs richly for poor performance are balanced out by companies that paid much more modestly and got much better returns.

More than that, focusing on the numbers tends to ignore a more basic issue: the general disconnect between executive pay and corporate performance, says Hodgson.

Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli, for instance, has drawn criticism for enjoying a rich contract while the company's stock has been stagnant. But Nardelli's contract isn't all that much different from those of most other CEOs, he says. Those contracts, which have typically been rich with options, tend to reward CEOs regardless of how well the company and its stock are performing, he says.