Over-education and the great recession. The case of Italian Ph.D graduates

Abstract

The paper evaluates the impact of the Great Recession on Ph.D over-skilling using data drawn from four annual cohorts of Ph.D graduates surveyed by the Italian National Institute of Statistics. The results show that over-skilling is positively associated with the Great Recession. However, it has an heterogeneous impact across job characteristics, as being occupied within academia or R&D-related sectors protect the workers from the negative effects of the economic fluctuation.