For that audience, a top economist could be a good choice for the same money.
Links to that actually happening is exactly the kind of evidence I'm asking for.
Links to that actually happening *for non government officials* is exactly the kind of evidence I'm asking for.
Here's an article about them: Matthew Mcconughey got $135k for one at the University of Houston; Katie Courik got $110k for speaking at the University of Oklahoma in 2006. Crucially, the article notes that a) fees are often confidential, but can go up to half a million dollars(!) and b) schools try to bargain them down.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/04/02/matthew-mccon...
Many universities also have "lecture funds" with pretty hefty budgets. I was not privy to the exact numbers, but assuming they run at cost, ticket price*capacity suggests some people are commanding six figures.
Edit: here's a link, since it only takes 10 seconds to find: https://www.allamericanspeakers.com/discover-your-speaker.ph...
Notable: Ava DuVernay (film director) starts at $200k. Tim Ferriss says $100k-$200k. Viola Davis: $200k and up. I'm certain that none of these people are obligated to these prices; if Citadel is buying, anyone would be silly to not raise the price. Conversely, all are certainly able to make speeches at discounted rates or gratis to schools, nonprofits, etc.
Also notable (because it refutes your priors) is a lack of public officials, or those who have held public office.
Edit (again): Here are private economists who make bank for speeches: https://www.allamericanspeakers.com/searchresults/economist#...
Sort by price and you'll see that people do hire economists to speak for six figures, even if they have no nexus to government. Yellen is higher-profile than most of these, and again anyone would be foolhardy to not double their rate for Citadel.
Here's Dan Schulman at Goldman Sachs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q_jVu5T80g
Or at a conference that runs $2300-$7000/head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q_jVu5T80g
This is admittedly a little bit murky, since some of these appearances might be part of the person's "day job": Helmut Panke talked at a bunch of auto shows about BWM and its new products. The ones I linked above, however, seem like they're probably not.
I'm not inviting Alec Baldwin for his knowledge / advice.
Are you saying Yellen is not being paid for her knowledge / advice?
It doesn't seem like a crazy idea for a corporate retreat-style event. Have a day full of internal presentations reviewing the last year, describing future initiatives, etc. After dinner, Yellen talks, telling some stories about her time on the Fed, working with Clinton, and maybe caps it off with a section about "Future Challenges." People like hearing/meeting celebrities, so it caps the day off nicely while being reasonably educational too.
People spent the energy to provide sources. Are you spending the same time?
What sources provides you the confidence to say that some demographics are "overwhelmingly dominated"...?
And that's exactly the bias I'm trying to eliminate with my question.
I am struggling to think that there are any examples that you won't dismiss, no matter how applicable.
Dan Schulman, Dara Khosrowshahi, Dr. Helmut Panke. And now I'm bored of scrolling through.
There is another bin that is "paid for brand-building advertisement." - i.e. celebrities.
The proposition is that ex-government officials are just getting paid market rate for her knowledge and insight.
If that's the case, it should be trivially easy to find non government officials people getting paid $300k a speech for their knowledge.
You've identified listings - which is better than I thought there would be ! - but not sales.
Yellen earned $7.2m in two years. If all three of those combined earned half as much in speaking fees over that same time, I'd be definitely convinced that it's ho-hum
If you're a motivated research reading this interested in answering this empirically, I'd suggest trying to find organizations that both pay this level of fees and have to disclose it to the public when they do (I'm hoping this might be the case for public companies under SEC regs, but that's just a hope)
But $300k is not outside the ballpark for what people make for speaking. It's fine to be outraged by that, but it is fair to call it "market".
The only reason outrage seems justified is that the demographics of those that can charge $300k a speech appears overwhelmingly dominated by government officials.
I'm open to being shown otherwise with explicit links.
I could be wrong here, what do I know. But that's my read on the situation, and it's why this sort of thing doesn't bother me that much.
They're often interesting, but they're fairly anodyne: a famous author talking about their recent book, a CEO talking about their successes or new focus on sustainability/diversity/etc, some broad perspective on current events. You can see how Goldman folks might benefit a little bit from knowing about (say) the likely timeline for vaccine roll-outs, but you could get much of the same info from an hour of NPR.
However, meeting the person seems like a nice perk or recruiting/marketing tool.
- all have an interest in finance
- are varying ages (so may not enjoy the same music)
- are from various countries (so may not be into the same sports)
and you have the budget, someone like Yellen is absolutely a substitute good for e.g. having a private Ludacris concert. It's entertainment and continuing education in one. Plus your staff get to brag about the private event to their millionaire peers who did not get that perk.
Citadel probably paid way more for their employees to listen than for her to speak, in terms of wages.
I hear you can get Zuckerberg or Gates for that kind of money, but they make more than that in an hour just from their existing wealth.