Top executive pay and performance

Using data on 241 of Britain's largest industrial companies, the pay received by top executives in 1985 is studied as a function of corporate performance. An attempt is made to estimate the extent to which executive pay and shareholder wealth are linked. Rival explanations, relating pay to the assets, employment level and turnover of the company, are also examined. No support is found for the managerialist view that remuneration tends to be correlated with size attributes. The results do, however, suggest that, while much of the variation in executive pay remains unexplained, there is evidence of executive remuneration policy serving to effect incentive alignment between the executive's and shareholders' interests.