This includes an analysis of ownership data covering over 300 companies in 3 industries already compiled by Cosh and Hughes for the years 1968-79. The project extended the panel into the 1990s, and then elucidated via case study and econometric analysis the relationship of changes in executive remuneration and share-ownership to corporate performance. Thus Cosh and Hughes extended the data set to 1994 and prepared an econometric analysis of the relationship between executive pay, executive dismissal and company performance in the Electrical Engineering Industry. The final version was published in the International Journal of Industrial Organisation in July 1997. The paper shows that both pay and dismissal probabilities are more closely related to size than to performance.
Bigger companies pay more and sack less frequently.
Work on the econometric relationship between pay, company size and performance was carried out covering the period 1967-1986. The central aim here was to establish the stability of these relationships over a long period of time in which the political and contractual context have changed. This has itself posed significant econometric questions which have not been addressed in previous analyses for the UK which have focused on relatively short periods of time. In addressing this issue, Cosh, Hughes and Guy have worked with a specially constructed panel dataset covering around 200 of the largest UK firms over a 20 year period. This combination of a large number of observations and time periods allowed both individual time series and successive annual cross section analysis for a 20 year period.