Overeducation, Regional Labour Markets and Spatial Flexibility

Felix Büchel and Maarten van Ham
Additional contact information
Felix Büchel: Max Planck Institute for Human Development

No 424, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: For most workers, access to suitable employment is severely restricted by the fact that they look for jobs in the regional labour market rather than the global one. In this paper we analyse how macro-level opportunities (regional labour market characteristics) and microlevel restrictions (the extent to which job searchers are restricted to the regional labour market) can help to explain the phenomenon of overeducation. For the purposes of this project we obtained special permission to link regional data supplied by the German Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning to data provided by the respondents in the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), based on their region of residence. The use of multilevel models made it possible to combine both individual and regional characteristics in the same models. In addition, we used the Heckman two-step procedure to control for selective access to employment. The results show that the size of the labour market is an important factor in avoiding overeducation: looking for a job on a large labour market increases the probability of finding a suitable job. Access to a car for personal use and a longer commuting time reduce the risk of working in a job for which one is overeducated.

Keywords: regional labour markets; Overeducation; spatial flexibility; multilevel models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J24 J44 J61 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2002-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published - published in: Journal of Urban Economics , 2003, 53 (3), 482-493

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp424.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Overeducation, regional labor markets, and spatial flexibility (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp424

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().