doi:10.1016/j.jpolmod.2019.02.015engGarcia-Mainar, I.Montuenga, V.M.The signalling role of over-education and qualifications mismatchART-2019-111276Over-education may arise from the voluntary decisions of individuals to acquire more qualifications than those required in the workplace, such that over-education may have a signaling role that allows workers to compensate for the lack of certain other skills, or to gain access to the labor market. This paper analyses the signaling role of over-education in Spain, a country characterised by a strongly-segmented labor market with high unemployment levels, and a large number of over-educated. Using micro data for a representative sample of Spanish workers, three different methods are applied to provide evidence that educational mismatch plays a clear signaling role. Policy implications are derived to alleviate inefficiencies in the allocation of educational resources and in the incentives of workers to use over-education as a signal.2019http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/8821610.1016/j.jpolmod.2019.02.015http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/88216oai:zaguan.unizar.es:88216info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/S13info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/UZ/UZ2015-SOC-01JOURNAL OF POLICY MODELING 41, 1 (2019), 99-119All rights reservedhttp://www.europeana.eu/rights/rr-f/info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess