This paper uses data from the Cedefop European Skills and Jobs (ESJ) survey, a new international dataset of adult workers in 28 EU countries, to decompose the wage penalty of overeducated workers. The ESJ survey allows for integration of a rich, previously unavailable, set of factors in the...

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...

This paper investigates the extent to which the returns to gaining a PhD degree depend upon the region of birth, the region where the degree was earned, and the place of work. Eastern Germany serves as an interesting showcase in light of the ongoing debate surrounding the underrepresentation of...

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...

A substantial and rapidly growing literature has developed around estimating earnings gains from two-year college degrees using administrative data. These papers almost universally employ a person-level fixed effects strategy to estimate earnings premia net of fixed attributes. We note that the...

Exploring a rich matched employer-employee data set over the 1998-2012 period and a novel measure of educational mismatch, this study analyses the short and medium-term effects of over- and undereducation on the wages of newly hired workers. The data show that more than 50 percent of the...

This article investigates the extent to which personality traits and cognitive skills can be seen as potential determinants of overeducation, and can explain the overeducation wage penalty. Using a representative survey of the Polish working-age population with well-established measures of...

This study replicates and challenges the finding of zero wage returns to compulsory schooling in Germany by Pischke and von Wachter (Review of Economics and Statistics, 90(3), 592-598), which is unusual in the literature yet widely cited and until now uncontradicted. I document that this finding...

This study replicates and challenges the finding of zero wage returns to compulsory schooling in Germany by Pischke and von Wachter (Review of Economics and Statistics, 90(3) 2008, 592-598), which is unusual in the literature yet widely cited and until now uncontradicted. I document that this...

With increasing educational attainment in Germany, the issue of inefficient human capital allocation gains importance. Especially overeducation seems to be a problem, since more and more highly educated individuals are required to take jobs that do not match their educational level, settling for...