Many areas in applied econometric research within political economy fail to come up with conclusive findings. This is the case, for example, with studies on the determinants of public social spending in Latin America, a key area of research given the impact of social programs on poverty, inequality, and welfare more generally. In this area, as in others, it is hard to identify clear answers regarding the impact of economic processes and political institutions. Two reasons explain this lack of knowledge accumulation. First, each study uses different data sources and analytical models. Second, some of the empirical strategies required to solve various econometric problems may affect the results. This article questions the role of econometric research as the only method to explore political economy questions and highlights the importance of promoting conversations between complementary methods of both quantitative and qualitative traditions.
Marques and Salavisa (2017) use fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze age-based labour market dualization in Southern European, Anglo-Saxon and a few Nordic countries. They argue that segmentation at the expense of young outsiders is driven by several factors in non-linear ways: different configurations of deindustrialization, labour market coordination, employment protection, and liberalization can lead to youth outsiderness. We question the validity of their empirical analysis and argue that a more complete interpretation of fsQCA measures of fit does not confirm their conclusions. We use the occasion for a hands-on discussion of how the consistency and PRI scores of the sufficiency solution terms are calculated. A good understanding of these allows the researcher to understand which cases and configurations drive high or low scores, and thus facilitates a better understanding of the results.
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