Esta es la versión de autor del artículo publicado en: This is an author produced version of a paper published in:Journal of Policy Modeling 34 (2012) This study examines the effects of educational mismatch on wages in the Spanish labour market since the mid-nineties. First we study the evolution of returns to education and then we estimate returns to education in terms of the match between the worker's schooling and the job requirements. The results indicate that returns to education have declined since the mid-nineties. One also finds that the return associated with the job's required education is greater than that corresponding to the worker's actual schooling, and that the return on an additional year of attained education is positive but less than that of an additional year of required education. From a policy perspective, the existence of educational mismatch points to inefficiencies in the allocation of the educational resources. Investment on education can positively contribute to alleviate the unemployment problem in Spain, but taken into account the existence of educational mismatch it also becomes necessary to introduce structural reforms in order to adapt the job structure to a model of production based on knowledge so that the more highly qualified workers can find a job that corresponds to their educational level.JEL classification: I20; I29; J30

This article aims to analyse gender wage differentials in Spain by taking into account the levels of educational attainment and by studying whether the educational mismatch affects the gender wage gap. Focusing on returns to education, evidence is found on the existence of educational mismatch and on its contribution to determine wages, with women suffering greater wage penalties that are associated with educational mismatch. Furthermore, although the gender wage gap is lower for individuals with low educational levels, we find that the part of this gap due to differences in returns is greater in this group. On the contrary, the gender gap is greater among highly-educated workers, but in this case most of the wage differentials are due to differences in productive characteristics. In any case, our results suggest that gender wage discrimination tends to be greater for those workers who show educational mismatch.

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This paper analyses the labour market entry of Spanish school leavers and the match between education and work at the early stages of working life, using a specific data set drawn from the Spanish Module Education to Labour Market Transitions (2000). Special attention is paid to university graduates, because Spain experienced a strong growth in the demand for higher education during the last decades of the 20th century. The empirical evidence shows that although over-education is a common phenomenon in the Spanish youth labour market, being a graduate seems to be associated with a lower likelihood of over-education in the first job. Our results indicate that over-education affects more women than men and foreigners than Spaniards.