This essay delivers two main innovations with respect to the existing literature. First, and foremost, by extending the work of Nicaise (2010) relative to the reservation wage to the case of overeducation, we propose a statistical test to discriminate between alternative theoretical...

The wage effect of overeducation has only recently been investigated in the case of Ph.D. holders. The existing contributions rely on OLS estimates that allow measuring the average effect of being educationally mismatched at the mean of the conditional wage distribution. This paper, instead,...

In this paper, we use the Chinese General Social Survey data (2010-2017) to analyse the returns to different education qualifications. We additionally compare the returns to vocational education with returns to academic education, at both the upper secondary level and the tertiary level....

We test for the signalling hypothesis versus human capital theory using the Wiles test (1974) in a country which has experienced a dramatic increase in the supply of skills. For this purpose, we construct a job match index based on the usefulness of the school-provided skills and the relevance...

International study programmes are increasing in number worldwide, but little is known about the impact on local students' job prospects, especially in a non-English speaking countries. Using rich administrative data from Statistics Netherlands, we analyse labour market outcomes of native...

This paper surveys the theoretical approaches used in the literature to study the phenomenon of delayed graduation and university dropout. The classical human capital model does not contemplate failure, which the amended human capital model does. Delayed graduation and university dropout are two...

This paper contributes to the literature on overeducation by empirically investigating the wage penalty of job-education mismatch among Ph.D. holders who completed their studies in Italy; a country where the number of new doctoral recipients has dramatically increased over recent years while...

Purpose - There is a long period from completing studies to finding a permanent or temporary (but at least satisfactory) job in all European countries, especially in Mediterranean countries, including Italy. This paper aims to study the determinants of this duration and measure them, for the...

This essay provides a comprehensive interpretative framework to understand the reasons why the school-to-work transition (SWT) is so slow and hard in Italy. The country is a typical example of the South European SWT regime, where the educational system is typically rigid and sequential, the...

This essay discusses the determinants of youth unemployment within the EU and then the alternative policy options currently at stake. We argue that youth unemployment regards especially some peripheral EU countries and is due to a mix of factors that should be addressed more vigorously, starting...