The purpose of the article is to present the results of the study of the essence and features of various economic models in different countries and their classification and systematization based on the application of various criteria and determination of the most competitive options of these models on this basis. It has been established that with the generally different nature of a large number of approaches to the classification of economic models, the results of applying these approaches often coincide with regard to the type of model and its name, and the common feature of all economic models is the combination of market liberalism and rather strict state regulation of the economy. In this study, the authors use the level of satisfaction with living conditions in the country’s population, expressed through the happiness index, as a criterion for the efficiency and, accordingly, the competitiveness of economic models in countries that use one or another economic model as a factor in its formation. WHR (World Happiness Report) data were used to make a comparative assessment of the level of well-being in countries. The results of the studies conducted at the UN level indicate that, according to the accepted criterion, the leading positions are occupied by Northern European countries – Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Holland, Sweden, Norway, and Finland is at the top of this rating for the sixth year. Although the USA takes a leading position, with its liberal economic model, in the field of scientific and technological research and in the world economy as a whole, in this rating it is only in the 15th place. At the same time, the massive and organized transition of all countries with a lower level of development to comparatively more efficient economic models should not be expected, since a specific economic model in each country is formed according to the conditions that allow it to form in one or another variant. The main factor in the significant diversification of economic models in different countries is the prevailing type of their social system – inclusive or extractive, which determines the different level of development of these countries and the level of well-being in them. The traditional linear model of the economy in all its manifestations is already out-of-date both from the ecological and a social point of view. It is justified that the economy of Ukraine can and should perform and develop on the basis of a model with strict state regulation and a gradual transition to a socially oriented model.