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Overeducation wage penalty among Ph.D. holders: an unconditional quantile regression analysis on Italian data

Giuseppe Lucio Gaeta (Human and Social Sciences, University of Naples L'Orientale, Naples, Italy)
Giuseppe Lubrano Lavadera ( Link Campus University, Rome, Italy)
Francesco Pastore (Economics, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Capua, Italy)

International Journal of Manpower

ISSN: 0143-7720

Article publication date: 15 March 2022

Issue publication date: 9 November 2023

286

Abstract

Purpose

The wage effect of job–education vertical mismatch (i.e. overeducation) has only recently been investigated in the case of Ph.D. holders. The existing contributions rely on ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates that allow measuring the average effect of being mismatched at the mean of the conditional wage distribution.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors implement a recentered influence function (RIF) to estimate the overeducation gap along the entire hourly wage distribution and compare Ph.D. holders who are overeducated with those who are not on a specific sample of Ph.D. holders in different fields of study and European Research Council (ERC) categories. Moreover, the authors compare the overeducation gap between graduates working in the academic and non-academic sector.

Findings

The results reveal that overeducation hits the wages of those Ph.D. holders who are employed in the academic sector and in non-research and development (R&D) jobs outside of the academic sector, while no penalty exists among those who carry out R&D activities outside the academia. The size of the penalty is higher among those who are in the mid-top of the wage distribution and hold a Social Science and Humanities specialization.

Practical implications

Two policies could reduce the probability of overeducation: (a) a reallocation of Ph.D. grants from low to high demand fields of study and (b) the diffusion of industrial over academic Ph.Ds.

Originality/value

This paper observes the heterogeneity of the overeducation penalty along the wage distribution and according to Ph.D. holders' study field and sector of employment (academic/non-academic).

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper have been presented in several occasions, such as the XIV c.MET05 Workshop (Ferrara, 8/9 June 2017), at the ISEG 2017 conference (Brasov, October 2017) and a seminar at the University of Salerno (2020). The authors thank Klaus Zimmermann, Sergio DeStefanis and the other seminar participants for useful comments. Moreover, the authors thank the Associate Editor of the Journal, Thomas Lange and two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.

Citation

Gaeta, G.L., Lubrano Lavadera, G. and Pastore, F. (2023), "Overeducation wage penalty among Ph.D. holders: an unconditional quantile regression analysis on Italian data", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 44 No. 6, pp. 1096-1117. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-02-2021-0100

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

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