Skill Mismatch, Nepotism, Job Satisfaction, and Young Females in the MENA Region

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper investigates the effects of skills mismatch, nepotism, and gender discrimination on wages and job satisfaction, with a specific focus on MENA workplaces. The results show that young women suffer more from labor market inefficiencies and benefit less from nepotism than their men counterparts, but also that females, immigrants and ethnic minorities were hit to a bigger extent by skill mismatch phenomenon. Finally, the authors show that skill mismatch is negatively correlated with job satisfaction and wages.

 

I find the paper quite well written and well documented. The topic very interesting with a focus on skill mismatch in MENA region, bringing new insights in the literature. 

 

However, I also raise some unclear points. Here are my main comments, in the order of importance: 

 

My first concern is related to the definition of skill mismatch. Are the authors talking about educational mismatch (the difference in levels of education) or skill mismatch (the difference in levels of skills). This could lead to very different impact on wages and/or satisfaction and the authors seem to rely on overeducation when talking about gaps in skills… This is quite confusing and the authors should make it clearer by relying on skills concerns solely.

 

The authors rely on subjective measures of skills mismatch when computing their binary independent variable. That is, the worker is said as mismatched in skills if the respondent perceives a skill mismatch problem. This has huge implications since this measure depends on workers intrinsic characteristics which could in fine influence the results ! The authors should be aware of that. 

 

Related to the dataset, I was wondering why MENA region should be specifically investigated. Is it more impacted by education and/or skills mismatch ? The authors mention the region specificities on page 19, but they should better clarify this point.

 

Then it is far from being clear how the authors measure the variable nepotism. The authors mention that they rely on a binary variable to measure nepotism. However, interrogation remains regarding the measurement of this variable. Since this variable is a key variable, the authors should elaborate more on how they measure it. 

 

Finally, some key authors in the mismatch literature are missing and deserve to appear in the paper: Rycx (2012), Mahy et al. (2015),  Kampelmann et al. (2020), Cultrera et al. (2022).

 

Good luck !

Author Response

Please find attached the reply to reviewers report.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper has a number of good ingredients. Especially the literature used is wide, but so is the theme of the paper. The title provides skill mismatch, nepotism, job satisfaction and young females in the MENA region. Each of these issues are discussed to some extent, but basically in the empirical work, you try to explain wages and job satisfaction. The paper could benefit from defining the title of the paper more spesifically. Also, I consider the literature somewhat extensive for a research article. 

Some more spesific issues:

-p. 2, you could mention also the functioning of the labour market in the beginning as one relevant aspect connected to skill mismatch 

-p3 , the broader sociatal context is discussed: this is very good

-75 % and 44 % are mentioned. 75 % seems to be the share of whole female population in the region (?), but 44 % should be explained properly for the reader

p. 7 males are more likely to publish than females: - this is not at all put into context here

p. 8 ..."surprisingly showed positive wage effect for skill shortage" -why is this surprising, it is how the labour market should function? I did not understand the reasoning here. 

p. 13 discussing nepotism, you refer to US family business recruitment practices: - this is not a perfect source for nepotism in the MENA region

p. 16 (and elsewhere)"term employee", please explain what you refer to (is it temporary or fixed-term employee?)

In the text you use the term correlations, but what you get in the regression models are coefficients. In the models, you only provide the number of observations but not any other model properties. Please check these.

In the variables you use, it is not fully clear why you have variables for different educational levels and then separately for vocational training. Please explain this as well. 

 

 

 

Author Response

Please find attached the reply to reviewers report.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The new version of the manuscript is now in line with the recommendation for publication. I thank you the authors for their work on the article.