The coolest ratio we’ve seen in a long time: The New York Times’ so-called Marx Ratio claims to provide a (rough) answer to the age-old question of “who benefits the most when a company is successful: It’s shareholders or its employees?” A little-noticed provision in the 2010 Dodd-Frank act requires publicly traded firms in the US to disclose median employee compensation. The Times’ business desk says its Marx Ratio, named for Karl (not this Karl) “captures the relationship between a company’s profits — the return to capital, on a per-employee basis — and how much its median employee is compensated, a rough proxy for the return to labor. … Companies with high Marx Ratios offer particularly strong rewards to their shareholders relative to workers.”

Not surprisingly, companies in labor-intensive industries tend to favor workers more: Amongst them are “huge retailers Walmart and Amazon, hotel companies like Marriott and Hilton, and both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.” Others with high Marx Ratios include tobacco giants, consumer products companies and fast-food outlets.

Yeah, yeah, but what about in finance? Does it really surprise you to learn that investment bankers claim more of the economic pie in the US than do commercial bankers? “The profitability of those commercial banks is driven by things the company controls: their network of branches, their information technology systems, their brand reputation. Their employees … have little leverage with which to demand high pay. … By contrast, the investment banks employ a lot more highly compensated, highly sought-after professionals, who in turn can demand premium salaries.”