The bad, the good and the ugly

Abstract

During the 20th century, Norway experienced two very serious banking crises, respectively in 1920–28 and 1988–93. Relative to the size of the economy, both these crises were comparable in size with the banking crises that took place in Ireland, the UK and the USA in 2007–10, during the global financial crisis. This article presents a comparison of several distributional effects that followed in the wake of, respectively, the two Norwegian crises and the above-mentioned national banking crises of 2007–10. The analysis is based on empirical material taken from both historical statistics and earlier research studies. The analysis takes as its starting point some structural similarities and differences between the three financial regimes in which the crises in question took place – that is, a classic liberal regime; an early phase of a neoliberal regime; and a full-blown neoliberal regime. First, the gross changes in distribution of incomes and wealth in the societies concerned are analyzed. The analysis argues that in all three time periods, there was a rise Årgang 62, nr. 1-2021, s. 51–77 ISSN online: 1504-291X