Wage penalties in overqualified employment are well documented, but little is known regarding the underlying mechanisms. We test two explanations, namely, formal overqualification and a mismatch of occupational skills. By using the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) survey that is linked to...

If a person is overqualified in the sense that an employee's level of training exceeds the job requirements, then some human capital lies idle and cannot be converted into appropriate (monetary and non-monetary) returns. Migrants are particularly at risk of being overqualified in their...