The various European capitalism models: Convergence and growth in the 2014-2019 inter-crisis period

Abstract

The Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) literature has recently manifested a dynamic development. Among others, the member states of the European Union (EU) have been studied extensively from this viewpoint, and main capitalism models have been identified. Yet, the global financial and economic crisis and its aftermath in Europe have impacted the member states' economies, typically in asymmetric ways and, in 2020, a highly diverse EU faced the COVID-19 induced economic crisis. Our study investigates the EU member states from a perspective different from the existing research on VoC in Europe: our starting point is the macroeconomic decomposition of GDP. Our findings draw up a categorisation somewhat different from the previous results: while the core of the EU is rather consistent and homogenous, clusters of the periphery do not fully coincide with geography and earlier typisations; there are also single outliers and 'New tigers of Europe' emerging. Nevertheless, the core-periphery divide still stands overall.