IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-05i20001.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An analysis of perceived overqualification in the Swiss labor market

Author

Listed:
  • Erdal Atukeren

    (Swiss Institute for Business Cycle Research (KOF) - ETH Zurich)

  • Aniela Wirz

    (University of Zurich and KOF / ETH Zurich)

Abstract

This paper takes Switzerland as a case study and examines the determinants of (perceived) overqualification in a macroeconomic setting where there is indeed excess demand for qualified labor. Our analyses show that overqualification in the Swiss labor market cannot be explained by possible rigidities and discrimination. Hence, the labor market in Switzerland must in general be considered as efficient. Hence, unobserved heterogeneity should indeed account for the phenomenon of overqualification / overeducation. Nonetheless, women's family commitments are found to restrict the full utilization of their investment in human capital. Thus, there exists some room for policy measures to improve the job – education match of women (especially of those who have children between 0 – 6 years of age) by increasing the availability of external child care facilities and / or making child care at home more affordable.

Suggested Citation

  • Erdal Atukeren & Aniela Wirz, 2005. "An analysis of perceived overqualification in the Swiss labor market," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 9(2), pages 1-10.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-05i20001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/EB/2005/Volume9/EB-05I20001A.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hartog, Joop, 2000. "Over-education and earnings: where are we, where should we go?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 131-147, April.
    2. Duncan, Greg J. & Hoffman, Saul D., 1981. "The incidence and wage effects of overeducation," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 75-86, February.
    3. Frank, Robert H, 1978. "Why Women Earn Less: The Theory and Estimation of Differential Overqualification," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 68(3), pages 360-373, June.
    4. Bauer, Thomas K., 2002. "Educational mismatch and wages: a panel analysis," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 221-229, June.
    5. Groot, Wim & Maassen van den Brink, Henriette, 2000. "Overeducation in the labor market: a meta-analysis," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 149-158, April.
    6. Felix Büchel & Harminder Battu, 2003. "The Theory of Differential Overqualification: Does it Work?," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 50(1), pages 1-16, February.
    7. Dolton, Peter & Silles, Mary, 2001. "Over education in the graduate labour market: some evidence from alumni data," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 19546, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Johanna Weststar, 2009. "Worker Control as a Facilitator in the Match between Education and Jobs," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 47(4), pages 723-740, December.
    2. Oliver Fabel & Razvan Pascalau, 2007. "Recruitment of Overeducated Personnel: Insider-Outsider Effects on Fair Employee Selection Practices," TWI Research Paper Series 18, Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz.
    3. Diem, Andrea & Wolter, Stefan C., 2014. "Overeducation among Swiss university graduates: determinants and consequences," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 47(4), pages 313-328.
    4. Theo Sparreboom & Alexander Tarvid, 2016. "Imbalanced Job Polarization and Skills Mismatch in Europe," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 49(1), pages 15-42, July.
    5. Dong-Hoon Shin & David Bills, 2021. "Trends in Educational and Skill Mismatch in the United States," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-36, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Inmaculada Garc�a-Mainar & V�ctor M. Montuenga-G�mez, 2017. "Subjective educational mismatch and signalling in Spain," Documentos de Trabajo dt2017-03, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad de Zaragoza.
    2. Aniela Wirz & Erdal Atukeren, 2004. "Overeducation in the Swiss Labour Market: Does Anything Go Wrong?," KOF Working papers 04-85, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    3. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:9:y:2005:i:2:p:1-10 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Joanne Lindley & Steven McIntosh, 2010. "Is the Over-Education Wage Penalty Permanent?," Working Papers 2010004, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2010.
    5. L. Cattani & G. Guidetti & G. Pedrini, 2014. "Assessing the incidence and wage effects of overeducation among Italian graduates using a new measure for educational requirements," Working Papers wp939, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    6. Oliver Fabel & Razvan Pascalau, 2013. "Recruitment of Seemingly Overeducated Personnel: Insider--Outsider Effects on Fair Employee Selection Practices," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 57-82, February.
    7. Signe Jauhiainen, 2006. "Regional Differences in Overeducation," ERSA conference papers ersa06p180, European Regional Science Association.
    8. Daniel Erdsiek, 2016. "Overqualification of graduates: assessing the role of family background [Überqualifikation von Hochschulabsolventen: Welche Rolle spielt der familiäre Hintergrund?]," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 49(3), pages 253-268, November.
    9. Clemente Pignatti Morano, 2014. "The determinants of overeducation: Evidence from the Italian labour market," Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación volume 9, in: Adela García Aracil & Isabel Neira Gómez (ed.), Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación 9, edition 1, volume 9, chapter 35, pages 681-698, Asociación de Economía de la Educación.
    10. Morsy, Hanan & Mukasa, Adamon, 2019. "Youth Jobs, Skill and Educational Mismatches in Africa," MPRA Paper 100394, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Hung, Chia-Yu, 2008. "Overeducation and undereducation in Taiwan," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 125-137, April.
    12. Ingrid Linsley, 2005. "Overeducation in the Australian Labour Market : Its Incidence and Effects," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 939, The University of Melbourne.
    13. Hanan Morsy & Adamon N. Mukasa, 2019. "Working Paper 326 - Youth Jobs, Skill and Educational Mismatches in Africa," Working Paper Series 2452, African Development Bank.
    14. Carolina Castagnetti & Luisa Rosti & Marina Toepfer, 2017. "Overeducation and the Gender Pay Gap in Italy. A Double Selectivity Approach," DEM Working Papers Series 144, University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management.
    15. Daniela Rohrbach-Schmidt & Michael Tiemann, 2016. "Educational (Mis)match and skill utilization in Germany: Assessing the role of worker and job characteristics [Qualifikatorisches (Mis)matching und die Ausnutzung von fachlichen Kenntnissen und Fäh," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 49(2), pages 99-119, October.
    16. Séamus McGuinness, 2006. "Overeducation in the Labour Market," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 387-418, July.
    17. D. Verhaest & E. Omey, 2004. "What determines measured overeducation?," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 04/216, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    18. Joanne Lindley & Steven McIntosh, 2008. "A Panel Data Analysis of the Incidence and Impact of Over-education," Working Papers 2008009, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics, revised Jul 2008.
    19. Kampelmann, Stephan & Rycx, François, 2012. "The impact of educational mismatch on firm productivity: Evidence from linked panel data," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 918-931.
    20. Schwientek, Caroline, 2016. "Are immigrants overeducated in Germany? Determinants and wage effects of educational mismatch," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 07/2016, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    21. Brian Clark & Clément Joubert & Arnaud Maurel, 2017. "The career prospects of overeducated Americans," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-29, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Overeducation;

    JEL classification:

    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • N3 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-05i20001. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.