Kjell Bjørn Minde

This paper deals with relationships between puritanism, management and entrepreneurship. As this is an on-going debate among economic historians, it focuses on the period from the early 1800s until present times, where Norwegian high profile puritan entrepreneurship serves as the case.
The theoretical framework is that entrepreneurship is seen as an important liaison factor representing multifactor productivity in a Solow growth model. The paper provides new insight within different areas on the basis of utilization of available sources. Firstly, it gives new estimates of the entrepreneurship of the puritan leader, Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771–1824).
Secondly, it organizes his followers in three generations. The first is those who directly took up his heritage, i.e. Haugeans. Their heydays lasted until the middle of the 19th century. The second generation is characterized as Haugean descendants. These were highly influenced by the movement’s values. They dominated the scene from the late 1800s to the late 1900s. The third generation is called Neo-Haugeans, largely a fruit of the revival of Haugean values during the last decades.
Thirdly, the paper maps attributes and motivation of this puritan entrepreneurship during generations. The authors conclude that it was guided by high degree of innovation, family ownership, wide portfolios, and continuity, when stewardship seems to be an important motivational factor.

During the modernization of the Norwegian economy in the 1800s, different national and international pietistic and puritan groups, such as the Haugeans in Norway, probably played an important role in promotion of economic growth. The importance they had on the modernization of society in Norway, however, is not limited to the modernization of the economy alone, but also to the expansion of civil and political rights.
An important underlying question in the assessment of the role the Haugeans may have played in the modernization process in Norway is if they were numerous and strong enough in the Parliament and elsewhere to affect the community and leave a lasting influence on Norwegian history.
This study is an attempt to contribute to such a clarification by trying to identify the number of Haugean-minded members in the Norwegian Parliament during the 1800s.
Efforts to identify who they were and how many of the representatives that were Haugean-minded members of the Parliament, has been going on for a long time. Paradoxically, at present there is still no consensus. The estimates have ranged from 4 to 49.
The survey indicates that the number may have been slightly higher than assumed. 73 were elected as representatives or deputy representatives, of which 60 took seats in the Storting during 1814–1910.
The figure may have been higher than this as well, but only future research can determine how much higher.

Scholars warn that wealth leads to unsustainable environmental development. However, over the last decades, studies have shown an increase in environmental degradation at the initial stage of economic growth, and then a decline when economic growth reaches a certain level. This first acceleration and then deceleration create an inverted U-shaped curve between pollution and economic growth, called the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). Environmental degradation can be measured by different factors. This paper deals with two of them, i.e. energy consumption and energy intensity (EI). The latter is measured as the ratio between energy consumption and GDP. The relationship of energy consumption and intensity to economic growth can serve as a tool for examining whether an EKC exists. The paper presents continuous series of energy consumption energy intensity and gross domestic product for the Norwegian mainland economy 1835–2019. The series are used to examine the possible existence of relative and absolute environmental Kuznets curves (EKC). Time series are established using available data and annual figures for 1835–2019, which are presented for the first time. They depict a development that, first, reflects an almost constant downward trend in EI, and, second, the existence of EKCs. The paper also proposes a polynomial regression model to discuss the relationship between environmental degradation as measured by energy consumption and intensity on the one hand, and economic growth on the other. It is concluded that there are both relative and absolute EKC-relations between environmental degradation and economic growth, with 1975 as relative and 2002 as absolute turning point.