Historians find only worse economic crises than Norway is currently experiencing

He thinks that we will probably have to go back to the blockade during the Napoleonic War from 1807 to 1814 to find a similar crisis situation.

– That’s the closest I can think of. Due to the British blockade, a lot of production was stopped and imported products were not allowed in, he says.

“The authorities have closed so completely that we have never experienced it before,” says Grytten.

30s

The crisis of the thirties has been mentioned as a possible parallel. In 1931, GDP fell 7.8 percent. So far, Statistics Norway and Norges Bank have calculated that the drop in GDP will be between 5 and 6 percent this year. Therefore, the annual decline does not appear to be as severe.

But Lie notes that the 1931 figures were also influenced by another factor.

– The crisis in the 1930s came to Norway at the same time as a very large year of strike in 1931. A protracted labor conflict contributed to the fall in GDP, so the crisis alone would have hardly diminished as much as we now see the contours, he says.

On Thursday, for the first time in history, Norges Bank cut its key rate to zero percent. Norwegian statistics have determined that the sudden spike in the economy loses historical parallels.

Lie says it’s hard to predict how things will go, precisely because we’ve never experienced anything like this.

– The most serious consequences come from the stops and not from infections and diseases. We do not know the effects of this. What we see and arrive on time, when it comes to the drop in trade, income and GDP, indicates that the drop is very big and very deep.

It also says that there is little to indicate that there will be a rapid and abrupt rise to previous levels as society opens up.

The professor points out that Norges Bank did not come close to setting the interest rate to zero during the financial crisis. And this is exactly what the Governor of the Central Bank, Øystein Olsen, also pointed out in relation to the decision on the interest rate.

“The setback is much more severe than in the financial crisis twelve years ago,” he said.

Olsen admitted that he is also surprised by the scope.

– You have heard of pandemics, but for me it was more than hypothetical. It is good that the health authorities, both in Norway and internationally, think about this, but to be honest, I had not imagined that it would come the way we have now experienced. And, as an economist, I have not foreseen the consequences that we see now.