Lars Christian Bruno

Bruno, Lars Christian; Eloranta, Jari, Ojala, Jari & Pehkonen, Jaakko (2022)

Road to unity? Nordic economic convergence in the long run

Scandinavian Economic History Review Doi: 10.1080/03585522.2022.2032318 - Full text in research archive

This study examines Nordic economic convergence from the sixteenth to twentieth century respective of the economic leaders, in effect the UK before 1914 and USA thereafter. The paper uses a novel approach of combining the analysis of both GDP and wages. The examination of real GDP per capita suggests that there was a catch-up process in play, both with the economic leaders and among the Nordic states, from the early nineteenth century onwards. However, the examination of the adjusted silver wages suggests convergence among the Nordic economies by the end of the eighteenth century. Therefore, we argue, no single Nordic Model emerged from these development patterns, even though the Nordic states today do have striking similarities. Furthermore, they diverged from the West European growth path until the twentieth century, thus they were a part of the Little Divergence at Europe’s other peripheries. The world wars and other crises delayed the full impacts of the convergence process until the latter part of the twentieth century.

Bruno, Lars Christian (2021)

Natural resources and economic growth: comparing nineteenth century Scandinavia and twentieth century Southeast Asia

Scandinavian Economic History Review Doi: 10.1080/03585522.2021.1984298 - Full text in research archive

This paper aims to bridge part of the gap that exists between the resource curse literature and economic historical research on natural resources by analysing four resource-abundant countries. The study proposes that at the sectoral level, the determinants of growth in resource-based industries were mostly similar in the late 19th and late 20th centuries. However, we also argue that the relative contribution of natural resources to economic growth might have been declining during the late twentieth century. The evidence comes from an analysis of the forestry sector in Finland and Sweden between 1860 and 1910 and the palm oil industry in Indonesia and Malaysia between 1970 and 2016.

Bruno, Lars Christian & Steen, Riana (2021)

Norwegian oil market concentration and its effects on the oil service companies 1993–2013

Scottish Journal of Political Economy Doi: 10.1111/sjpe.12304

This paper explores the effect of market concentration of the Norwegian oil production sector (NPS) on Norway's second- largest industry, the oilfield services companies (OFS). To capture this effect, we use the system generalized method of moments approach (GMM) to estimate an em-pirical model, spanning the period 1993– 2013. The findings indicate that increased market concentration is consistent with lower profitability of the oilfield services companies, as the bargaining power of oil companies relative to service companies increases. Increased knowledge about this effect could contribute to improving strategies for the further de-velopment of these industries by stakeholders

Bruno, Lars Christian (2017)

Palm oil plantation productivity during the establishment of the Malaysian refinery sector 1970–1990

Economic History of Developing Regions, 32(3), s. 221- 269. Doi: 10.1080/20780389.2017.1343660 - Full text in research archive

Eloranta, Jari; Ojala, Jari, Pehkonen, Jaakko & Bruno, Lars Christian (2016)

Equality and Convergence in Nordic Societies in the Long Run: Europe and Other Comparative Mirrors

ANU Centre for European Studies Briefing Paper Series

Bruno, Lars Christian & Grytten, Ola Honningdal (2024)

Convergence between the Baltic and the Nordic economies: Some reflections based on new data for the Baltic countries

[Report]. Institutt for samfunnsøkonomi.

This short paper uses recent estimates of GDP per capita for the Baltic countries for the 1919-2020(22) period to test for convergence between the Baltic and the Nordic economies. Drawing from the methodology used in Bernard and Durlauf (1996) and Greasley and Oxley (1997), we utilise a time-series approach to test for bivariate convergence between the various Baltic and Nordic economies. We find some evidence of conditional convergence and catching up for the interwar period, 1919-1939 and the post-Soviet era 1993-2022, when for the communist growth period until 1988 we find no trace of convergence, when thereafter during the last years of communism, the Baltic economies went into a severe and devastating recession.

Bruno, Lars Christian (2022)

Resource curse in a historical perspective

[Academic lecture]. XIX World Economy History Congress.

Bruno, Lars Christian (2022)

Resource curse in a historical perspective

[Academic lecture]. Baltic Connections 2022.

Bruno, Lars Christian (2019)

Resource-based industrialization revisited

[Academic lecture]. 44th Annual Economic and Business History Society Conference.

Bruno, Lars Christian (2019)

Productivity Growth in Resource-Rich Economies

[Academic lecture]. The UiS Business School Wednesday Seminars.