Executive Remuneration in the Public Sector : How Different to the Private Sector?

Jiawei Si was a talented student - he completed a BCom honours degree at UWA in 2007, and was awarded a scholarship to complete a PhD thesis to be supervised by the two of us. Jiawei had a disability that must have made life extremely difficult for him, but he displayed great tenacity and cheerfulness throughout his time with us. Due to his disability, he had to withdraw from the PhD program, but was able to continue working as a research assistant for about 10 years, doing excellent work on several projects. His co-authorship in a number of publications (see below) recognises his significant contributions to these research projects. Sadly, Jiawei passed away in 2018.By chance, we recently rediscovered this paper written by Jiawei in 2011. The paper contains a careful comparison of the pay of executives in the Australian public sector with their private-sector counterparts after controlling for the influence of the size of the organisation. Although written as a progress report on his PhD research, the paper is more or less selfcontained and of such interest that it should be in the public domain – so here it is. This paper is another way to remember the courageous Jiawei Si