Asymmetries in the Pay-penalty from Skill Mismatches in EuropeHow different is the effect on high educated workers?

Resumen

In this paper, we use quantile regression and comparable data from 12 European countries to explore the effects of being skill mismatched on the conditional distribution of wages of differently educated workers for the period 1994-2001. In Europe as a whole for each type of education and year, the top quantiles of the distribution are less affected by pay penalty increasing the within inequality. By countries there are also asymmetries and the type of which changes. In 1994, in almost all cases there are no asymmetries and when they exist it turns out that top quantiles are more penalized in terms of wages than bottom quantiles, then the within groups inequality would decrease. However, in 2001, there are more countries with asymmetries, and most of them consists of top quantiles less penalized, and therefore there is an increase in the within groups inequality.