Company limousines roll through the British countryside carrying executives' children from their boarding schools to holidays at home. France's nationalized coal companies provide their engineers with rent-free homes. Swedish business men hunt elk in company-owned forests. Officials of Rio de Janeiro's Mesbla department store enjoy free vacations at their company's summer resort. All theseand many moreare the fringe benefits that are taken for granted by executives abroad, and account for the fact that they can often live high on salaries that usually run much lower than those in the U.S.
Such fringes are most generous in West Germany, where companies...