A new study has found that pay for chief executive officers has a tendency to leap forward due to a peer-review system used by U. S. corporations.

A study at Columbia University in New York has said that corporations often survey similar firms to find a base pay for top executives, coming up with what is called a "fair" market wage.

Random wage increases, the hiring of a superstar CEO or a wage hike that is not merit based, unwittingly becomes part of the survey, which corporations use to determine the pay of its next CEO, The University of Chicago Press Journals reported on Thursday.

Researcher Thomas DiPrete called the effect "leapfrogging."

DiPrete, a sociologist at Columbia University, said, "We show that CEO pay is not simply a function of what individual companies do, but is influenced by the behavior of leapfroggers at other firms." (With Inputs from Agencies)