Search

Writers on Norwegian economic history often claim that marine and maritime industries, i.e., the offshore sector, played a major role for value creation in the Norwegian economy for centuries. However, little has been done to quantify the sector’s contribution to the economy. The present paper seeks to quantify the size of the key offshore industries compared to GDP and exports. To do so it has been necessary to draw on new historical national account calculations in addition to compute several new series. Based on these calculations we find that the offshore sector made up a significant and important part of Norwegian GDP, and a dominant part of exports, 1816-2021. The key offshore industries were first fishing, thereafter ocean transport, and finally petroleum extraction. The sector’s overall size of the Norwegian economy has been quite stable in a long-term perspective, but with an increasing GDP share after the takeoff of oil and gas extraction from the continental shelf in the 1970s.

Work on historical monetary and financial statistics in Norges Bank started in the 1990s. We were inspired by Bank of England’s work on the collection of data for UK inflation over 300 years, which appeared in connection with its tercentennial in 1994. In 2001, Norges Bank’s project was extended with commissioned contributions from a national network of academic experts. The aim was to produce a set of historical data series, which covered as wide range as possible, based on available sources, of the past two centuries since Norges Bank was established in 1816. This project provided the basis for constructing composite long-run historical time series in areas of interest for a central bank with a focus on price stability and financial stability. Norges Bank’s project on Historical Monetary and Financial Statistics (HMFS) focuses on the collection and documentation of historical data which describe long-term trends in monetary and financial variables that are central to these core tasks of central banks. Central banks are also interested in a wider set of variables, which help put their core tasks in a more general context. The real economy interacts with the central banks’ core tasks through numerous channels. These channels may evolve over time and are subject to long-term changes in preferences, technology and institutions. Monetary and financial variables are also often in need of a scale variable to portray them in a broader context. It is therefore useful to illustrate developments in prices and quantities related to monetary and financial markets relative to entities such as GDP or GDP per capita. The broad mandate of many central banks today may call for an even wider perspective, which includes key indicators of demography, inequality and climate risks.

The present paper seeks to investigate the importance of financial instability during four banking crises, with focus on the small open economy of Norway. The crises elaborated on are the Post First world war crisis of the early 1920s, the mid 1920s Monetary crisis, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Scandinavian banking crisis of 1987-1993. The paper firstly offers a brief description of the financial instability hypothesis as applied by Minsky, Kindleberger, and in a new explicit dynamic financial crisis model. Financial instability creation basically happens in times of overheating, overspending and over lending, i.e., during significant booms, and have devastating effects after markets have turned into a state of crises. Thereafter, the paper tests the validity of the financial instability hypothesis by using a quantitative structural time series model. The test reveals upheaval of financial and macroeconomic indicators prior to the crises, making the economy overheat and create asset bubbles due to huge growth in debt. These conditions caused the following banking crises. Finally, the four crises are discussed qualitatively. The conclusion is that significant increase in money supply and debt caused overheating, asset bubbles and finally financial and banking crises which spread to the real economy.

The present paper seeks to explain how ethics and values in public policy can be result of different historical contingencies. Specifically, it explains the accomplishment of petroleum resource management in Norway. The main argument is that the success of this policy is an understanding of the ethics behind harvesting the resource rent of this non-renewable natural resource. To support the argument, the paper firstly describes a model of Recardian resource rent. Secondly, it investigates the set of values that were in place before the petroleum production started in the 1970s, as described in the influential white paper, “The role of petroleum activities in the Norwegian Society,” published in 1974. In the white paper, the government discussed the future opportunities, challenges, and responsibilities associated with the oil industry and how this would transform society. An important part of the white paper revealed the main ethical vision of the government, i.e., to build a “qualitatively better society” for the benefit of the people. Thirdly, the paper traces the historical roots of these values.

The present paper discusses Norway’s way to prosperity during the two last centuries. The main reason for its wealth seems to have been the ability to meet international demand by utilizing its rich natural resources, adopting efficient technology, and draw on a skilled labor force in order to gain high productivity and profitability. Historical national accounts reveal that Norway’s wealth was close to the western European average in the early nineteenth century. From the 1840s to the mid 1870s, Norwegian growth rates were very high, due to significant growth in foreign trade. This period was followed by relative stagnation until the 1890s, from when the country saw rapid industrialization on the basis of hydroelectricity. After the two world wars Norway adopted a social democratic rule, with a high degree of economic planning, called the Nordic model. This has contributed to a large public sector and evenly distributed wealth and resources. The discovery of oil and gas on the Norwegian continental shelf marked a new era, when Norway experienced higher growth rates than most western economies. This has made it the country with the highest score in the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) during the two first decades of the 21st century.

It is well known that protestant and puritan environments historically have fostered entrepreneurs. This paper looks at serial entrepreneurship which took place in Norway in the 19th century in networks led by the puritan leader Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771-1824) and his followers. The paper seeks to give an overview of their entrepreneurship and discusses their motivation behind their actions. It concludes they were heavily engaged in serial entrepreneurship, not only within business, but also concerning, politics, welfare and education and that there was a clear religious motivation for their activities.

The present paper looks at the Weber-Tawney thesis on the positive link between Protestant ethic and economic growth. Both scholars observed that Protestant areas in the Western world seemed to gain faster and more wealth than areas with less Protestants, and largely explained this by a special mentality fostering entrepreneurship in Protestant thinking. By conducting a literature study of research in the area, the paper concludes that despite wide debate, there is a significant acceptance that there is a statistical link between religious affiliation and growth. However, scholars tend to disagree on the causal relationships. Still, the bulk of the literature seems to agree that the Reformation paved way for entrepreneurship and economic growth in one way or another. The paper seeks to map the most important explanations and the arguments behind them.

Existing historical GDP series for Norway do not always coincide with our historical knowledge of the economic development. This is to a large extent a result of lack of calculations from the production side and in addition to insufficient data sets upon which these series rest. The present paper offers new knowledge of historical national accounting in Norway in several ways. Firstly, a new and novel set of annual gross domestic product series by industry are presented for the period 1816-2019. Secondly, the new estimations suggest revision of the long-run GDP series. Thirdly, this implies it is necessary to revise our understanding of parts of Norwegian economic history.

During the last decades several scholars have argued that environmental degradation first increases in initial phases of economic growth, and thereafter declines as economic growth enters a certain level in developed economies. This makes environmental degradation form an inverse U-shaped curve, called the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). Environmental degradation can be measured by different proxies. This paper deals with two, i.e. energy consumption and energy intensity (EI), which again is measured as the ratio between energy consumption and GDP. The relationship of energy consumption and energy intensity to economic growth can thus, serve as tools to examine whether an EKC exists. Hence, this paper presents continuous series of energy consumption, energy intensity and gross domestic product for the Norwegian mainland economy 1835-2019. These are thereafter utilized in order to examine the possible existence of relative and absolute environmental Kuznets curves (EKC). The time series are established by drawing on available data, and annual figures for the period 1835-2019 are presented for the first time. They depict a development which reflect that EKCs exist. The paper also offers a polynomial regression model to investigate into the relationship between environmental degradation, measured by energy consumption, energy intensity and economic growth expressed as GDP per capita. It concludes there is clear evidence of both relative and an absolute EKC-relations between environmental degradation and economic growth, with 1975 as relative and 2002 as absolute turning points.