Here is the flaw. If you are properly compensated and don't have any other options, giving you a big fat raise doesn't improve your productivity, that's true and that's what the studies measure. Hey are you a developer? Here's an extra ten bucks, will you now come up with a better algorithm? No, of course not, because money doesn't make you a better developer, just as paying existing public school teachers more doesn't make them any less severely incompetent.
However, if you want to attract more productive people in the first place, you have to pay them more money because there is a competitive environment. The "excellent studies" try to prevent readers from noticing that that's not what they looked into, and it's clear they do this intentionally.
Do you think that Google would attract the same caliber of developers by paying what McDonalds pays its line workers? You must believe that if you really believe that these studies are correct in their claims that there is no advantage to paying more than survival wages.
The simple fact is that sustenance wages are not in fact ideal for attracting the best developers, designers, writers, actors and inventors.
If you don't recognize that, but continue to insist that the opposite is true, then you are intentionally seeking to deceive people.
