Which Variety of Measure and Test are Best to Assess the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ Framework? Two Suggestions for Paunescu and Schneider

The recent article by Paunescu and Schneider (2004) is to be warmly welcomed as one of the first systematic appraisals of the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ (VoC) framework. This short article offers two suggestions for further tests of the VoC paradigm that they may carry out in the future. First, any measure of comparative advantage used should be based on export data alone, the primary reason being that the conceptual and empirical work conducted so far in the VoC framework places greater emphasis on export data than on net export data (the measure used by Paunescu and Schneider). Second, future studies should test VoC arguments based on the concept of necessity, which underlies many of the arguments espoused within the VoC paradigm. The conventional statistical techniques used by Paunescu and Schneider, however, conflate sufficiency and necessity.