Over-education and Italian Ph.D Graduates during the Great Recession (original) (raw)

This paper evaluates the impact of the Great Recession on Ph.D over-education using data drawn from four annual cohorts of Ph.D graduates surveyed by the Italian National Institute of Statistics. Over-education is examined through the definitions of both overskilling and over-qualification. To assess the effect of the crisis, we adopt several proxies, among which economic resilience. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the nexus over-education-resilience receives attention. The results show that over-skilling is negatively associated with the Great Recession. More generally, working on research-based activities and having study experience abroad are always significant drivers to overcome any kind of job mismatch. Conversely, being self-employed increases the risk of over-education, casting some doubts on the satisfactory additionality of Ph.D employment trajectories beyond academia and research. Finally, in contrast with previous results for graduates, we find ...