Using panel data from the 2010 Graduates Occupational Mobility Survey, this paper estimates the incidence and impact of horizontal and vertical mismatches on labour mobility among Korean female college graduates at the early stages of their careers. Unlike most previous studies, this study proposes three types of educational mismatch status:(1) vertically mismatched only; (2) horizontally mismatched only; and (3) both vertically and horizontally mismatched. The findings show that the share of educationally mismatched workers is non-negligible in the Korean labour market (approximately 30 per cent). However, the data also points to an improvement in job matching over time. Regardless of the type of educational mismatch, the results provide evidence consistent with many previous studies: educational mismatch is significantly and positively associated with job turnover. In particular, vertically and horizontally mismatched workers are more likely to switch jobs than their vertically or horizontally mismatched counterparts. These findings indicate that educationally mismatched graduates are more likely to change jobs-suggesting that educational mismatch can be viewed as an investment in human capital at the beginning of a career.

Most prior research addressing the topic of job mismatch focuses on educational mismatch, while the economic analysis of skills-job mismatch in terms of skill utilization has received relatively little attention in the literature. Using the 2007 Korea Labor and Income Panel Survey (KLIPS), this paper examines the impact on wages of skills-job mismatch between acquired and required English language proficiency in the Korean workplace. The major findings confirm the validity of the assignment theory proposed by Sattinger (1993), which asserts that the returns to additional investment in human capital appear to depend in part on the quality of the assignment of heterogeneous workers to heterogeneous jobs, and thus returns to investment in skills are limited by how well jobs exploit workers’ skills. Specifically, the results are first, that skills-job mismatch based on English language job requirements has a strong statistically significant impact on wages, second, that the returns to over-skilling are negative (the wage penalty), while the returns to under-skilling are positive (the wage premium), and third, that the wage penalty associated with over-skilling is stronger than the wage premium associated with under-skilling.

Germany's occupational and sectoral change towards a knowledge-based economy calls for high returns on education. Nevertheless, female graduates are paid much less than their male counterparts. We find an overall unadjusted gender pay gap among German graduates of 27 %. This corresponds to an approximate wage gap of 32.5 % thereof 20,3 % account for different endowments and 12,2 % for different remunerations of characteristics. Suboptimal job matches of females tied in family and partner contexts are supposed to account for at least part of the gendered wage drift. But overeducation does not matter in this regard. Instead, females earn 4 % less because they work on jobs with fewer years of required education. Furthermore, solely males are granted breadwinner wage premiums and only men successfully avoid wage cuts when reducing working hours. We conclude that the price effect of the gap reflects employers' attributions of gender stereotypes, gendered work attitudes as well as noticeable unobserved heterogeneity within and between sexes.

The study estimates the effect of union membership on workers' wages using individual‐level data from a survey conducted among employees in various sectors in Malaysia in 2012. Initial results show that union membership has a positive effect on wages. However, after controlling for endogeneity, union membership or the presence of a labour union within a firm is not statistically significant for individual wage levels. Because there is no trade union wage premium, the study suggests that the revival of labour union membership is not going to be an easy task.

The paper examines the returns to education for ethnic groups in the Malaysian labour market during the early 1960s' post‐colonial period. The analysis is based on data from the West Malaysia Family Survey of 1966–67. It is found that individual returns to education were positive during the period examined. However, the returns to education of particular ethnic groups differed. The findings suggest that ‘equal education for all’ does not guarantee that each ethnic group will receive equal wages unless there are other interventions in the labour market.