From Manufacturing Productivity to National Wages: The Main-Course Variable and Norwegian Wage Formation, 1900–2025

Ragnar Nymoen ()
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Ragnar Nymoen: Dept. of Economics, University of Oslo, Postal: Department of Economics, University of Oslo, P.O Box 1095 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway

No 4/2026, Memorandum from Oslo University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We analyse the role of the wage scope defined by the manufacturing sector in the history of wage coordination in Norway. Using econometric methods, we document a long-term empirical equation that link the national annual wage to the manufacturing-sector wage scope, defined as the value of labour productivity, and which is known as the ’main-course’. Tests of exogeneity support the interpretation of the main-course as a long-run driver of the national annul wage. Contributing to the literature on the wage–productivity nexus, we show that the productivity component of the main-course has been the dominant determinant of the secular growth in the purchasing power of annual wages. Changes in the relative price of manufacturing value added and consumer goods have played a subsidiary role, together with unemployment and reductions in annual working time. Identified structural breaks cluster in the 1920s and 1930s, reflecting economic crises and institutional change, while the estimated relationship remains consistent with Norway’s contemporary pattern wage bargaining system.

Keywords: Pattern wage bargaining; Wage-price nexus; Main-course model; Wage coordination; Long-run relationship; Cointegration; Economic history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B20 B40 C50 E30 N10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2026-09-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
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