Abstract

This study undertakes a comprehensive analysis of the sources of wage differences between male and female workers in Europe. Its main purpose is to shed light on the interplay of so far neglected explanatory factors as well as to reveal country differences in the roles of these factors. One specific point of interest concerns the impact of gender differences in the incidence of overeducation. For this reason, our study examines in an introductory module also the determinants of overeducation in Europe. In this way, we make contributions to two different highly debated subfields in labour economics, the overeducation and the gender pay gap literature. In both fields, our innovative fea-tures are the large number of determinants as well as the large number of countries simultaneously analyzed. The study is divided into three modules, which build on each other.