Some Empirical Evidence
The human capital and the job competition theories are both confirmed by many scholars (e.g. [18, 25-27,48, 66]).
Manacorda and Petrongolo [62] note that overeducation is lower across OECD countries compared to the USA.
Several empirical studies have also been conducted in order to measure overeducation and mismatch among graduates and the social and economic repercussions of this issue [4, 20, 22, 45, 49, 52] and among Ph.D. students [33].Many scholars show that mismatching and overeducation afflict highly educated young people in many industrialized countries [2, 10, 18, 28, 30, 55, 61, 65, 71].
In contrast, there is no evidence regarding the career mobility theory. In fact, the results of Battu et al. [21], Buchel and Mertens [29] as well as Baert et al. [19] reject the view of overeducation as the starting point for a promising career. Baert et al. [19] even find evidence regarding overeducation proving that workers systematically accept low-paid jobs that minimize their skills for a long period of time.
Among all general frameworks, the assignment theory currently seems to be the most well-founded from an empirical point of view [26]. A number of studies have attempted to reveal the potential determinants of mismatch [9]. Other studies have analysed the effect of mismatching on job satisfaction [60] or economic growth [44, 63,77].
According to this approach, empirical analyses have also investigated the returns of overeducation on earnings and job search [4, 41, 46-48, 57, 71].
Finally, many scholars have studied overeducation linked to mismatching (see, for example: [36, 39, 61, 81]).
For further details on empirical literature relating to this matter, see Senarath and Patabendige [73].
2.3