Purpose – Many contributions to the educational mismatch literature address the productivity effects of both excess and deficit educational attainments for workers at the individual level. Due to the limited transferability of their results to establishment-level performance, especially when allowing for the possibility of spillover effects from mismatched workers to their well-matched colleagues, from an employer’s point of view, it is highly important to know the net effect of educationally mismatched employees on productivity at the establishment level. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – This paper analyses the impact of overeducated and undereducated workers among an establishment’s workforce on its productivity, providing first representative evidence for Germany. Using linked employer-employee data from Germany, the author estimates dynamic panel production functions using a system GMM estimator. Findings – The author finds that undereducated workers among an establishment’s workforce impair its (establishment-level) productivity, implying that an establishment’s HR management should avoid the recruitment of undereducated workers, at least if they follow a short-term personnel policy. The effect for overeducated employees is also negative, albeit small and insignificant. Originality/value – The consideration of the phenomena of over and undereducation from the employer’s point of view provides further insight into the consequences of educational mismatch.

The Sample of Integrated Welfare Benefit Biographies (SIG) is a new administrative longitudinal microdata set representative of recipients of Germany’s main welfare programme, the Unemployment Benefit II (UB II, Arbeitslosengeld II). The data set contains detailed longitudinal information on welfare receipt and labour market activities, and hence enables researchers to analyse the dynamics of benefit receipt, income and employment. A distinct feature of the SIG is that it provides information not only for individual benefit recipients but also for family members, including children and partners. This is possible because eligibility for UB II benefits depends on the household structure, and it is means-tested on household income. In addition to socio-demographic and regional information, the SIG contains extensive information on the employment biographies of benefit recipients and their household members from the Integrated Employment Biographies (IEB) of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). This allows researchers to examine the interaction between labour market participation and benefit receipt. The SIG is available to researchers at the Research Data Centre (FDZ) of the Federal Employment Agency (BA) at the IAB.

Background: Using a sample about company hiring behaviour from the BIBB Establishment Panel on Training and Competence Development 2011, this paper analyses the hiring decisions of German establishments. Companies essentially have two choices to meet their labour demands: to provide their own apprenticeship training or to recruit unskilled or already-qualified staff through the external labour market.

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Für Beschäftigte existieren zwei Kanäle um eine Führungsposition zu erreichen: die externe und die interne Beförderung. Anhand der neuaufgelegten deutschen Beschäftigtenstatistik vergleichen wir externe und interne Beförderungen mithilfe eines multinomialen Logit-Modells und unter Kontrolle für die Heterogenität zwischen Arbeitgebern. Wir nehmen an, dass die Charakteristika von Beschäftigten abhängig von ihrer Sichtbarkeit innerhalb von Betrieben und über Betriebe hinweg abweichende Einflüsse ausüben. Wir zeigen, dass die Realarbeitszeit für interne Beförderungen eine bedeutsamere Informationsquelle darstellt als für externe. Demgegenüber spielen formale Ausbildungsabschlüsse und die ursprüngliche Aufgabenkomplexität, welche beide auch über Betriebe hinweg sichtbar sind, eine größere Rolle bei externen Beförderungen. Übereinstimmend mit dem Konzept statistischer Diskriminierung unterliegen Frauen und Ausländer bei externen Beförderungen einem stärker ausgeprägten Nachteil. Bei Frauen ist dieses Ergebnis vollständig auf Beförderungen zu Managern bzw. leitenden Angestellten zurückzuführen, welche durch hohe Aufgabenkomplexität gekennzeichnet sind. Darüber hinaus zeigt die Realarbeitszeit einen starken positiven Interaktionseffekt auf die Beförderungsaussichten von Frauen.