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Ownership and Pay in Britain

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  • Alex Bryson

Abstract

Drawing on principal-agent perspectives on corporate governance, this paper examines whether employees’ hourly pay is linked to ownership dispersion. Using linked workplace-worker data from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) 2011, we find average hourly pay is higher in dispersed ownership workplaces. The raw gap of 30 log points falls to 8 log points when we control for differences in worker and workplace characteristics. The premium is constant across most of the wage distribution, but falls a little at the 90th percentile to become statistically non-significant. This contrasts with earlier papers which indicate that higher level employees are the primary beneficiaries of higher pay from dispersed ownership.

Suggested Citation

  • Alex Bryson, 2015. "Ownership and Pay in Britain," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 452, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:nsr:niesrd:452
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Leone Leonida & Antonio Giangreco & Sergio Scicchitano & Marco Biagetti, 2023. "Britain and BrExit: Is the UK more attractive to supervisors? An analysis of the wage premium to supervision across the EU," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 61(2), pages 291-312, June.
    2. Estrin, Saul, 2021. "Introduction to symposium on the impact of employee influence," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 110516, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Saul Estrin, 2021. "Introduction to symposium on the impact of employee influence," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 59(4), pages 982-987, December.
    4. David Marsden, 2021. "Patterns of organizational ownership and employee well‐being in Britain," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 59(4), pages 988-1019, December.
    5. Thomas Amosse & Alex Bryson & John Forth & Heloise Petit, 2023. "The Micro-Foundations of Employment Systems: An Empirical Case Study of Britain and France," DoQSS Working Papers 23-04, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    ownership structure; corporate governance; principal agent; pay;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies

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