One reason often put forward for South Korea's rapid economic growth has been the rising level of educational attainment of its workforce. Correspondingly, the proportion of Koreans who complete tertiary education has also rapidly increased (and is also considerably higher than the OECD...

This paper examines the factors determining variations in international rates of overeducation. We find significant effects for a range of factors including labour market structural imbalances, risk, trade-union density and the structure of academic funding. The results suggest that...