Educational mismatch and the cost of underutilization in Turkish labour markets

There is no guarantee that the right candidate will be matched with the right job in labour markets. If the mismatch is substantial, the surplus education and the deficit in schooling lead to underutilization and a loss in productivity in the economy as a whole. The aim of this study is to understand the importance of these issues for Turkish Economy by analyzing the economic returns of educational mismatch in Turkey. First we explore educational mismatch levels in Turkey for nine different occupation areas in different regions and for different industries using four recent household surveys from 2009 to 2012, which include more than one million observations. Based on this data, we analyze effects of educational mismatch on wages in Turkish labor market by using the ORU models. Results indicate that wage loss of over-educated workers is substantially higher for higher age. Regional ORU estimations show that Istanbul is the region with highest benefit for additional required education. Over-education rewards and under-education penalties are also among the highest for İstanbul. Manufacturing is the industry with the highest population and with the highest wage effects for both over-education and under-education. Among the major occupations, wage effects are in general highest for office clerks. Finally, the cost of underutilization and productivity loss due to educational mismatch is substantial in Turkey

Is the lower return to immigrants’ foreign schooling a post arrival problem in Canada?

Published VersionUsing the 2006 Canadian Census, this paper investigates the lower return to immigrants’ foreign education credentials after adjusting for their occupational matching in hosting labor markets. We develop two continuous indices that quantify the matching quality of the native-born in both horizontal (fields of study) and vertical (educational degrees) dimensions. This allows us to separate the effects of immigrants’ occupational attainment and their foreign schooling quality on wage earnings by measuring immigrants’ occupational match relative to that of native-born. Our findings indicate that the lack of portability in immigrants’ foreign credentials may not be addressed effectively by post arrival policies as the results show that a significant and persistent poor matching quality for internationally educated immigrants cannot substantiate the lower return to their foreign education credentials

Educational mismatch and the cost of underutilization in Turkish labour markets

There is no guarantee that the right candidate will be matched with the right job in labour markets. If the mismatch is substantial, the surplus education and the deficit in schooling lead to underutilization and a loss in productivity in the economy as a whole. The aim of this study is to understand the importance of these issues for Turkish Economy by analyzing the economic returns of educational mismatch in Turkey. First we explore educational mismatch levels in Turkey for nine different occupation areas in different regions and for different industries using four recent household surveys from 2009 to 2012, which include more than one million observations. Based on this data, we analyze effects of educational mismatch on wages in Turkish labor market by using the ORU models. Results indicate that wage loss of over-educated workers is substantially higher for higher age. Regional ORU estimations show that Istanbul is the region with highest benefit for additional required education. Over-education rewards and under-education penalties are also among the highest for İstanbul. Manufacturing is the industry with the highest population and with the highest wage effects for both over-education and under-education. Among the major occupations, wage effects are in general highest for office clerks. Finally, the cost of underutilization and productivity loss due to educational mismatch is substantial in Turkey

Economic benefits of studying economics in Canada: a comparison of wages of economics majors with wages in other fields of study, circa 2005

Publisher's version/PDFWe compared the wages of economics degree holders with of those in 49 other fields of study using data from the 2006 Canadian population census. At the undergraduate level, economics majors earned the sixth highest average wage in 2005. When demographic controls were applied, they ranked ninth on the salary scale. When we compared the wages in 15 fields that require students to take math courses, economists ranked in the middle, as they also did when working as managers and professionals. When working as business and finance professionals, economists had wages surpassed only by finance majors. At the graduate level, economics majors had a greater wage advantage over all of the other fields except for business majors. These results are useful for Canadian university economics departments that have been experiencing declining enrolments over the past few years. In addition, we hope they will enable students to make more informed choices regarding their academic discipline. The results also highlight the need to direct greater policy attention towards developing mathematical skills among incoming university students as a prerequisite for them to build analytical skills, the demand for which in the labour market has been demonstrated in some Canadian and US studies

Assortative preferences in choice of major

The primary objective of this study is to examine the contribution of available information constrained by parents’ fields of study to the observed assortative preferences in their children’s choice of major. Comparable to panel models, we define within-family transmission functions with 1-to-2 matches (1 for each parent). Using the confidential major file of the 2011 National Household Survey from Canada, the results show that children’s choice of field of study exhibits significant assortative preferences isolated from ability sorting and unobserved differences across majors and other family characteristics. With some caution, we attribute this persisting assortative tendency to the information asymmetry across alternative majors built on by parents’ educational backgrounds within families