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This paper uses linked Swiss administrative and survey data to examine the relationship between educational mismatch in the labour market and emigration decisions, carrying out the analysis for both Swiss native and previous immigrant workers. In turn, migrants’ decisions separate returning home from onward migration to a third country. We find that undereducation is positively associated with the probability of emigration and return to the country of origin. In contrast, the reverse relationship is found between overeducation and emigration, especially among non-European immigrant workers. According to the predictions of the traditional model of migration, based on self-selection, migrants returning home are positively selected relative to migrants emigrating to other countries. We also find that immigrants from a country outside the EU27/EFTA have little incentive to return home and generally accept jobs for which they are mismatched in Switzerland. These results highlight the relevance to understand emigration behaviours in relation to the type of migrant that is most integrated, and productive, in the Swiss market, hence enabling better migration and domestic labour market policy design.

Small modular nuclear reactors have the advantage of flexibility in deployment and shorter construction time compared with large reactors. Investment appraisals in the energy sector are traditionally based on discounted cash flow, but this tends to underestimate the value of management flexibility during the decision-making process. The ‘real options’ valuation method can better support an investment appraisal. This paper, leveraging the real options approach, gives an account of two key strategic aspects to support the decision-making process in building small modular reactors: the time to market with the relative stage-gate process and the effect of a new plant on the existing portfolio. This paper assesses small modular reactors against other base-load power plants and, once applied to the UK scenario, it shows the superior performance of small modular reactors.

Immigration has become systematically politicized and opposed by many individuals. We examine individual attitudes toward equal opportunities for foreigners and Swiss citizens, using cross-sectional data from the Swiss Household Panel. Individuals with low levels of education tend to oppose foreigners, while the opposition by individuals with high levels of education increases with the risk of unemployment. Values and beliefs explain the negative attitudes of individuals with low levels of education, but not the association with the risk of unemployment for individuals with high levels of education. Clearly, both values and economic factors are important for explaining attitudes toward foreigners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Career mobility theory suggests that given a certain occupation, schooling improves upward mobility in terms of promotion and wage growth. We are the first to test the implications of this theory for over- and undereducation by means of direct information about promotions to managerial positions. Using German administrative data entailing an employer-reported – and hence objective – measure of educational requirements, we show that overeducated workers are indeed more likely to be promoted and that this career mobility advantage is more pronounced in the early stages of their working lives. By contrast, undereducated workers are less likely to be promoted to managerial positions. Moreover, in terms of wage growth, while overeducated workers benefit more, undereducated workers benefit less from promotions than their well-matched educational peers. Altogether, these findings strongly support the career mobility theory. Furthermore, by differentiating between internal and external promotions, we prov...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose an improved concept of educational mismatch that combines a statistical measure of over- and undereducation with the worker’s self-assessment of skill utilization. The novelty of this measurement approach consists in identifying the vertical and horizontal nature of skills mismatch, that is, a mismatch in which skills are either over/underutilized or not utilized. Design/methodology/approach – Cross-sectional data from the Swiss Household Panel survey for the years 1999 and 2004 are used to determine the true extent of educational mismatch among workers. Moroever, different versions of the Duncan and Hoffman wage equation are estimated depending on whether basic or alternative measures of educational mismatch are included. Findings – The empirical analyses provide the following results: first, at least two-third of the statistically defined overeducated workers perceive their skills as adequate for the job they hold and are then apparently overeducated; second, overeducated workers whose skills are not related to the job do not receive any payoff to years of surplus education; and third, apparently overeducated workers have similar wage returns compared to others with the same schooling level but who are statistically matched. All in all, these findings confirm that most of those overeducated according to the statistical measure have unobserved skills that allow them to work in a job for which they are well-matched. Originality/value – The paper indicates the need to consider both vertical and horizontal skill mismatches when measuring educational mismatch in the labour market. In that way, it is possible to account for worker heterogeneity in skills whose omission may generate biased estimates of the incidence and wage effects of over- and undereducation.

There is evidence that immigrants experience difficulties in finding a job that matches their human capital endowment upon arrival in the host country. Based on data from the Migration-Mobility Survey 2016, our empirical analysis has two goals. First, it measures the incidence of educational and skills mismatches among different groups of recent immigrants according to their origin and status of foreign credential recognition. Second, it investigates whether the recognition of foreign qualification improves access to the labour market by reducing the risk of being mismatched in education or skills. Results show that recent migrants face the lowest risk of educational and skills mismatches when holding a Swiss diploma or having obtained recognition of foreign credentials. Although our analytical approach does not allow us to identify causal relationships, credential recognition seems to play a beneficial role in the immigrants’ assimilation process.

Background: Since 1963 Italian law (Law 292/1963, Legislative Decree n.81/2008), defines Tetanus Vaccination (TeV) as mandatory for defined occupational categories, including Construction Workers (CWs). Materials and Methods: An institutional survey on of CWs was performed in the Autonomous Province of Trento (Oct. 2016 - Apr. 2017). Vaccination booklets/certificate were retrieved recalling: TeV status (1), and TeV settings (2), i.e. basal schedule; year of last shot, healthcare providers who performed TeV, and TeV formulate(s). Results: Data about 205 CWs were collected (mean age 40.6±10.3 years; 78.0% 10 years before the survey (mean: 8.8 ± 8.2 years). The majority of boosters had been administered by Vaccination Services of the Local Health Unit (47.3%), followed by Occupational Physicians (20.0%) and General Practitioners (11.2%). In 85.9% of CWs, a monovalent formulation was used. Combined TeV were mainly reported in CW who had received last vaccination shot in Vaccination Services (96.2%; p

Using two periods’ panel data from the Swiss Graduate Survey, this study examines the incidence and wage effects of overeducation. Contrary to most prior research, we account for graduate heterogeneity in perceived skills mismatch when measuring overeducation and correct for potential omitted ability bias in the estimated pay penalty associated with overeducation. We find that graduates who are overeducated and mismatched in skills (i.e. genuinely overeducated) are the most penalized in terms of earnings. This evidence is still valid when using the fixed effects approach, while the pay penalty is no more significant for graduates who are overeducated but matched in skills (i.e. apparently overeducated). This indicates that the wage effects for apparently overeducated graduates are mainly due to the omission of unobserved ability.

AVU/BAM is the Gaia software for the Astrometric Verification Unit (AVU) devoted to the monitoring of the Basic Angle Monitoring (BAM), one of the metrology instruments onboard of the Gaia Payload. AVU/BAM is integrated and operative at the Data Processing Center of Turin (DPCT), since the beginning of the Gaia Mission. The DPCT infrastructure performs the ingestion of pre-elaborated data coming from the satellite and it's responsible of running the code of different Verification Packages. The new structure of the pipeline consists of three phases: the first is a pre-analysis in which a preliminary study data is performed, with the calculation of quantities needed to the analysis; the second one processes the interferograms coming from the instrument; the third phase analyzes the data obtained from the previous processing. Also it has been changed part of the long-term analysis and was added a phase of calibration of the data obtained from the processing.

Introduction: Many aspects of health differ significantly between men and women, including mental health where there are pronounced differences. Women are more likely than men to seek treatment for psychological problems and depression.

The goal of the Gaia mission is to achieve micro-arcsecond astrometry, making Gaia the most important astro- metric space mission of the 21st century. To achieve this performance several innovative technological solutions have been realized as part of the satellite's scientific payload. A critical component of the Gaia scientific pay- load is the Basic Angle Monitoring device (BAM), an interferometric metrology instrument with the task of monitoring, to some picometers, the variation of the Basic Angle between Gaia's two telescopes. In this paper we provide an overview of the AVU/BAM software, running at the Italian Data Processing Center (DPCT), to analyze the BAM data and to recover the basic angle variations at the micro-arcosecond level. Outputs based on preliminary data from Gaia's Commissioning phase are shown as an example.

In most Western democracies, immigrant populations have grown rapidly. Some individuals have followed these developments with unease and have negative attitudes towards immigrants and foreign citizens. Hainmueller and Hopkins (2014) highlight sociotropic concerns about the cultural and - to a lesser extent economic - impact of immigration, suggesting that the individual economic situation is less important for attitudes towards foreigners. By relying on levels of education or skills, existing studies, however, do not adequately take into consideration the fact that not all occupations are equally exposed to economic competition with foreigners. We use data from the Swiss Household Panel 2004 to 2006, and look at occupational concentration -- the share of foreigners that is more relevant for labour force competition than regional distributions. With some 250 occupations considered, a detailed and realistic picture of labour force competition is provided. Here we use random effects models to show that there is a negative association between the share of foreigners in one's occupation and positive attitudes to equal opportunities for foreigners. At the same time, we observe a positive association between the share of recently arrived foreigners and positives attitudes to equal opportunities. This suggests that workers are at the same time wary of competition with foreigners and welcome their contribution to overcome labour shortages. All results are robust to endogeneity and attrition concerns. By examining the role of the occupational share of foreigners, this paper is able to ascertain the importance of labour force competition alongside sociotropic concerns and fears of cultural threat well-established in the literature.

Using two periods' panel data from the Swiss Graduate Survey, this study examines the incidence, persistence and wage effects of overeducation. An alternative measure of overeducation that accounts for graduate heterogeneity in perceived skills mismatch is used. This analysis differs from previous panel data studies in that two estimation methods are applied to control for unobserved ability. Results indicate that graduates who are overeducated and mismatched in skills are the most penalized in terms of earnings. This evidence is still valid when unobserved ability is accounted for, whereas the pay penalty is no more significant for graduates who are overeducated but matched in skills. This result is robust to different definitions of perceived skills mismatch and is consistent with the notion that apparent overeducation reflects a lack of unobserved attributes, such as ability.

Over the past three decades, immigration has become systematically politicized by parties on the right, and opposed by many individuals in society. Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain variation in the opposition to immigration among the population. Economic arguments highlight the competition between native workers and immigrants over limited resources. Sociological arguments underline additional factors like values and beliefs. Using cross-sectional data from the Swiss Household Panel 1999, we account for nonlinearity in educational attainment, and consider relative risk to unemployment ‐ and how these two variables interact. We examine individual attitudes towards equal opportunities for foreigners and Swiss citizens. Here we show that individuals with low levels of education tend to oppose equal opportunities for foreigners, while for individuals with high levels of education such opposition can be observed with increasing unemployment risk. Our analysis demonstrates that values and beliefs can account for the negative attitudes of individuals with low levels of education. The association with unemployment risk for individuals with high levels of education, by contrast, is robust to this control for values and beliefs. It becomes clear that attitudes towards equal opportunities for immigrants are not a simple reaction to changes in the demographic composition of the labour force. Both values and economic factors play a central role.

This paper proposes an improved concept of educational mismatch that combines a statistical measure of over- and undereducation with the worker’s self-assessment of skill utilization. In that way, we account for worker heterogeneity in skills whose omission may generate biased estimates of the incidence and wage effects of over- and under-education. Using cross-sectional data from the Swiss Household Panel survey, the empirical analyses provide the following results: (a) at least two third of the statistically defined overeducated workers perceive their skills as adequate for the job they hold and are then apparently overeducated; (b) among the overeducated with a given schooling level, the wage return to education is lower for those who are mismatched in skills than for those who are not; (c) apparently overeducated workers have similar wage returns compared to others with the same schooling level but who are statistically matched. These findings confirm that most of those overeducated according to the statistical measure have unobserved skills that allow them to work in a job for which they are well-matched.

Using longitudinal data from the Swiss Household Panel, this analysis suggests that the cross-sectional estimates of the returns to educational mismatch are significantly biased when unobserved heterogeneity is omitted in the wage equation. The results of the standard fixed effects model indeed demonstrate that the wage returns to education are independent of the job requirements. Hence, this empirical analysis supports the human capital interpretation of the Swiss labour market.

This study examines the incidence and determinants of over- and underqualification among documented migrant workers in the Swiss labour market using cross-matched data from two sources of comprehensive information. At the same time, our statistical analysis aims at investigating the existence of gender differences in terms of brain waste. The main findings show firstly that the incidence of job-education mismatch is higher among first generation immigrants. Secondly, the duration of residence in the host country plays an important role in the probability of being over- or underqualified. Thirdly, our results support the relatively disadvantaged situation of immigrant women with young children in finding a job commensurate with their education. The conclusion gives some policy recommendations on how to make the best possible use of foreign qualifications of documented migrant workers and avoid any form of deskilling in the host labour market.