Year after year, as executive pay continues its inexorable climb, it’s amusing to watch corporate directors try to justify the piles of shareholder money they throw at the hired help. Check out any proxy filing for these arguments, which usually center on how closely and carefully the executives’ incentive compensation is tied to the performance of company operations.

But pay for performance is only as good as the metrics used to determine it. And as a recent study shows, some metrics — including the most popular — are downright ineffective at motivating executives to create shareholder value.

The study was done by James F. Reda, a veteran compensation consultant, and his associate David M. Schmidt, both of whom are in the human resources and compensation consulting practice at Arthur J. Gallagher & Company. They analyzed pay metrics used by 195 large companies over the five years that ended in December 2012. By comparing those measurements with moves in these companies’ stock prices, the study identified the common pay metrics that corresponded with above- or below-average performance.

Their analysis will come in handy for investors examining the executive-pay tallies for 2013. As usual, the numbers are staggering: The median compensation for C.E.O.s at the 100 largest companies that have filed so far was $13.9 million, according to the Equilar 100 C.E.O. Pay Study, conducted by Equilar, an executive compensation data firm. That’s up 9 percent from 2012.