Corporate Performance and Economic Convergence between Europe and the US: A Cluster Analysis Along Industry Lines

Abstract

We investigate the extent to which the United States and the countries of Europe have achieved economic convergence of their corporate sector. We define convergence as the homogenization of economic performance, institutional arrangements, and market valuation taking place at the meso-economic level. We perform a cluster analysis along industry lines and find that industries and corporations on both continents cluster in four groups, based on six variables measuring operating performance, ownership, and market valuation. The clusters resulted from the US data are more unstable than those resulted from European data. We are also able to pair a handful of highly similar clusters between the US and European data. These findings suggest a complex dynamic. It seems that the US corporate sector is more homogeneous than the European one. Moreover, some degree of convergence between the European Union and the United States appears to have already occurred.