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Abstract

The concept of asset specificity has become very prominent in the literature on
skill formation, welfare states and labour markets. Building on the varieties of
capitalism (VoC) school, this paper points out three distinct shortcomings of
this literature: first, the VoC approach does not fully account for the variation
of skill regimes in coordinated market economies (CMEs); second, the VoC
approach underestimates the importance of authoritative certification in determining
the real portability of vocational skills; and third, the complementarities
between skill formation and social policies are different from what is expected
in the VoC contributions. I argue that the variation of skill regimes in CMEs
covers not one, but two separate dimensions: firms’ involvement in skill formation
and the vocational specificity of the education system. On the basis of three case
studies, I demonstrate the existence of three distinct skill regimes in CMEs: the
segmentalist (firm-based) skill regime of Japan, the integrationist (school-based
occupational) skill regime of Sweden and the differentiated (workplace-based
occupational) skill regime of Germany.