The Boss and Everyone Else One lesson of the financial crisis is that excessive pay led to excessive risk-taking. To help curb exorbitant pay, the Dodd-Frank reform law included a so-called say-on-pay provision, which requires companies to put their pay practices to a shareholder vote at least every three years. The law also included a pay-gap provision, which requires companies to calculate and disclose the ratio of the chief executive's compensation to the median pay package at the company. Say-on-pay, though nonbinding, lets investors influence executive pay, while the pay-gap ratio is crucial to determining whether executive compensation is excessive and to judging the effect of pay gaps on company performance and the broader economy. Nearly two years after the passage of Dodd Frank, say-on-pay is slowly emboldening investors to question executive pay, most prominently this year at Citigroup, where shareholders recently rejected a $15 million pay package for the bank's chief executive, Vikram Pandit. But the pay-gap provision has not yet gone into effect. The delay is disturbing. The law specifically directs the Securities and Exchange Commission to require companies to compute and report the pay gap. Unlike other provisions in Dodd Frank, where Congress gave the S.E.C. the authority to weigh in on issues, but not a statutory mandate, the pay-gap provision does not leave crucial details up to regulators. Some regulatory guidance is needed, for example, in explaining how to factor in the pay of part-time workers. But, for the most part, Congress did not create much leeway for regulators - or for corporate opponents - to do anything but follow the law. Yet the S.E.C. has not issued the pay-gap rules. The main problem seems to be foot-dragging in the face of objections from corporate lobbyists, who claim the ratio would be too complex to calculate. But the real issue is not complexity; it is the reluctance of executives and boards to reveal and justify what are bound to be some very large pay gaps. The most informative approach would be to measure the gap both for a company's American work force and its global work force, which would show how an international work force affects the ratio. Coming up with such measures would be an additional burden on companies, but not an unreasonable one. Congress enacted this provision to enable investors, policy makers and the public to better understand - and to change - the dynamics behind indefensible pay gaps. It is past time for the S.E.C. to carry out the law.