Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post World Net. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. This paper adds to the small literature on the consequences of education-occupation mismatches. It examines the income penalty for field of education-occupation mismatches for men and women with higher education in Sweden and reveals that the penalty for such mismatches is large for both men and women. In fact, it is substantially larger than has been found for the US. Controlling for cognitive ability further establishes that the income penalty is not caused by a sorting by ability, at least for Swedish men. The income penalty for men decreases with work experience which is an indication that education-specific skills and work experience are substitutes to some extent. There is no evidence, though, that the mismatched individuals move to a matching occupation over time. Thus, for some, the income penalty seems to be permanent.JEL Classification: I21, J24, J31

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The main objective of this paper is to estimate and compare the return to investments in education for men belonging to different parts of the ability distribution. Our ability measure is the achievement test score from the Swedish Military Enlistment Battery. By exploring the measurement error in the test score, i.e. the deviation from the true latent ability level of the individual, we try to predict the expected biases in the "ability specific" returns to education, when using an achievement test as a proxy for ability. We find that a higher score on the Swedish Enlistment test is associated with a higher return to schooling. The relationship between the return to schooling and the test score does however seem to be decreasing in the test score. Thus, it it primarily the ability specific return to schooling for the lower test groups that divert from the average return to schooling. In general, the measurement errors in the test score do not seem to bring about any major biases in the ability specific returns to schooling.

This study uses a cognitive test score, the Swedish Military Enlistment test taken at age 18, to identify whether the ethnic employment and income gap in Sweden is caused by a pre-market skill gap and/or ethnic discrimination. The employment gap and income gap are estimated for males born in Sweden with different ethnic backgrounds: their parents were born in Sweden or in southern Europe or outside Europe. Controlling for the cognitive test score does not affect the ethnic employment gap, and for incomes the ethnic income gap almost disappears. Copyright � The editors of the "Scandinavian Journal of Economics" 2009. .