This article provides a statistical analysis of the core arguments of the 'varieties of capitalism' perspective on comparative capitalism. The authors construct indices to assess whether patterns of coordination in OECD economies conform to the predictions of the theory and compare the consistency of institutions across different spheres of the political economy. They test whether institutional complementarities occur across these spheres by estimating the impact of complementarities in labor relations and corporate governance on growth rates. To assess the durability of varieties of capitalism, they report on the extent of institutional change in the 1980s and 1990s. The authors argue that powerful interaction effects across institutions in the spheres of the political economy must be considered if assessments of the economic impact of institutional reform in any one sphere are to be accurate. The field of comparative political economy has long been interested in understanding how differences in the organization of national political economies condition aggregate economic performance. The intuition is that more than one economic model can deliver economic success. However, what are the central features that distinguish the operation of one political economy from another, and how should countries be categorized along these dimensions of difference? For developed economies, the answers to these questions in each era have corresponded to the principal challenges confronting those economies. During the 1960s, when economic modernization was high on the agenda, efforts to identify distinctive types of capitalism emphasized variation in the character of state intervention into the economy. When inflation rose to new heights during the 1970s, the emphasis shifted to the contributions of neo-corporatism to wage and price moderation. In recent years, scholars have been seeking approaches salient to an era of globalization. The object of this analysis is to subject one of the most prominent of these new approaches to a set of empirical tests. The authors focus on the 'varieties of capitalism' perspective introduced in a volume edited by Hall and Soskice. This approach distinguishes between capitalist economies by reference to the ways firms and other actors coordinate their endeavors. It suggests that nations cluster into identifiable groups based on the extent to which firms rely on market or strategic modes of coordination. From these formulations follow many important contentions about variations in economic performance, comparative institutional advantage, national responses to globalization, and comparative public policy. The varieties-of-capitalism approach is grounded in a rich set of comparative case-studies, but efforts to assess it using statistical analysis on larger numbers of cases are still at an early stage. Those efforts have been limited partly because we do not yet have good measures for the character of coordination, the concept at the heart of the analysis. As a result, the position of many countries within those categories remains ambiguous. We seek indicators for coordination that will allow us to test some basic tenets of this approach and that others can use for subsequent assessments. We are especially interested in one of the core contentions of the varieties-of-capitalism approach, namely, its theory of institutional complementarities in theThis article provides a statistical analysis of the core arguments of the 'varieties of capitalism' perspective on comparative capitalism. The authors construct indices to assess whether patterns of coordination in OECD economies conform to the predictions of the theory and compare the consistency of institutions across different spheres of the political economy. They test whether institutional complementarities occur across these spheres by estimating the impact of complementarities in labor relations and corporate governance on growth rates. To assess the durability of varieties of capitalism, they report on the extent of institutional change in the 1980s and 1990s. The authors argue that powerful interaction effects across institutions in the spheres of the political economy must be considered if assessments of the economic impact of institutional reform in any one sphere are to be accurate. The field of comparative political economy has long been interested in understanding how differences in the organization of national political economies condition aggregate economic performance. The intuition is that more than one economic model can deliver economic success. However, what are the central features that distinguish the operation of one political economy from another, and how should countries be categorized along these dimensions of difference? For developed economies, the answers to these questions in each era have corresponded to the principal challenges confronting those economies. During the 1960s, when economic modernization was high on the agenda, efforts to identify distinctive types of capitalism emphasized variation in the character of state intervention into the economy. When inflation rose to new heights during the 1970s, the emphasis shifted to the contributions of neo-corporatism to wage and price moderation. In recent years, scholars have been seeking approaches salient to an era of globalization. The object of this analysis is to subject one of the most prominent of these new approaches to a set of empirical tests. The authors focus on the 'varieties of capitalism' perspective introduced in a volume edited by Hall and Soskice. This approach distinguishes between capitalist economies by reference to the ways firms and other actors coordinate their endeavors. It suggests that nations cluster into identifiable groups based on the extent to which firms rely on market or strategic modes of coordination. From these formulations follow many important contentions about variations in economic performance, comparative institutional advantage, national responses to globalization, and comparative public policy. The varieties-of-capitalism approach is grounded in a rich set of comparative case-studies, but efforts to assess it using statistical analysis on larger numbers of cases are still at an early stage. Those efforts have been limited partly because we do not yet have good measures for the character of coordination, the concept at the heart of the analysis. As a result, the position of many countries within those categories remains ambiguous. We seek indicators for coordination that will allow us to test some basic tenets of this approach and that others can use for subsequent assessments. We are especially interested in one of the core contentions of the varieties-of-capitalism approach, namely, its theory of institutional complementarities in the