Countries and regions of the world economy differ according to the level of economic, social and political development, to their position and interrelationship with regional intégration complexes. The regional development is influenced by a set factors : historical background, scale (demographic, territorial and natural resources acquirement) and geographical position. The highly competitive long-term geopolitical communication between large-scaled resource abundant countries triggers small and ultra small areas to find out a unique chance to occupy a specific niche in the regional and world market. The primary goal of the article is the identification of small countries, revealing features of economic development and economic growth in economic history context of small economies classification. The object of investigation is focused on West European and Nordic countries small economies. The hypothesis of the article is that small states under consideration are developing as the «competitive peripheries»