This paper is among the first to investigate the impact of over-education and over-skilling on workers' wages using a unique pan-European database covering twenty-eight countries for the year 2014, namely the CEDEFOP's European Skills and Jobs (ESJ) survey. Overall, the results suggest the existence of a wage penalty associated with…

Using a unique pan-European dataset, we rely on two alternative measures of over-education and control stepwise for four groups of covariates in order to interpret the over-education wage penalty in light of theoretical models. Firstly, it appears that a significant fraction (i.e. between 1/5 and 1/3) of PhD holders in Europe are genuinely…

The study of social mobility can be traced back around 100 years, but up until the turn of the millennium it remained largely an academic topic. While a few seminal papers on income mobility had been published in the 1990s, the Sutton Trust's 2005 report, 'Intergenerational Mobility in Europe and North America' signalled a new wave of social…

Much research has been made in recent years on the effect of over and under education on earnings. In this paper, I examine the validity of the assumption that the return to over (under) education is independent of the level of education. I use data from the PIAAC survey to estimate the return to education. The findings show that while this…

This paper revisits the relationship between human capital and income inequality, using an updated data set on human capital inequality and a novel database on earnings inequality. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between these two inequality indicators, but with significant differences across countries regarding the turning point.…

Understanding the gender dynamics in educational transitions can help target policies to support equitable access to education as well as its quality and labour-market outcomes. In almost all OECD countries, the gender gap in favour of women is wider in tertiary education than at upper secondary level. Differences in programme orientation and…

In the last decades, developed economies have witnessed significant declines in wages for low-skill workers, increases in employment in high-skill occupations, rapid diffusion of new technology, and expanding offshoring opportunities. Labor markets in developed countries have reallocated labor from manual to cognitive jobs and from routine to…

Mixed findings characterize the literature on skills and economic distributions within and across countries. The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) offers new, internationally comparable data on literacy, numeracy, and digital problem-solving skills that can be combined with wage information. This paper…

The European labour market is challenged by changes in the demographic composition of the labour force and increasing work complexities and processes. Skills forecasting makes useful contribution to decisions by policy-makers, experts and individuals. In this publication, Cedefop presents the latest results of skills supply and demand forecasts.…

This article provides evidence about differences in the recent tertiary education expansion in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Focusing on these differences, we have examined private returns to tertiary education acquired before and after the tertiary education expansion. We compare these returns as follows: Austria with…

Since the 2004 EU enlargement established one European common labour market, a large number of Eastern Europeans have taken up seasonal employment as hired farm workers in Norwegian agriculture. Much attention in the public has been given to the potential for "social dumping" of these migrating workers, as they are considered prone to…

Innovation is the key to productivity growth and prosperity. Most empirical cross-country analysis of the determinants of innovation focus mainly on developed countries. The objective of this study is to fill this gap in the research and analyze the determinants of innovation in transition countries of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.…

Innovation is the key to productivity growth and prosperity. Most empirical cross-country analysis of the determinants of innovation focus mainly on developed countries. The objective of this study is to fill this gap in the research and analyze the determinants of innovation in transition countries of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.…