What money can buy? : three centuries of Norwegian wage and price development

Abstract

On the basis of newly utilized data from one of the largest manual historical archives on wages and prices internationally and unpublished data from Statistics Norway this article offers new wage and price series for Norway 1726-2006, which enable us to calculate real wages. These cover all main industries and sub-industries as well as an aggregated series for the entire economy. We conclude that long run real wages stayed fairly stable until the 1820s. Thereafter a modest increase took place until the 1870s, followed by rapid growth. Thus, the development of real wages seems to follow the pattern of modernization of the Norwegian economy.