The location of Norwegian manufacturing industry

Norway has, particularly in the last decade, experienced a trend of relatively rapid deindustrialisation; according to Statistics Norway, as many as 32,000 jobs in manufacturing have been lost between 2000 and 2004. In this report we ask to what extent the Norwegian manufacturing industry has shown a tendency to concentrate in particular regions, and, similarly, if there has been a tendency for some regions to specialise in any particular industries. The analysis is based on data from the Manufacturing Time-series database, consisting of plant level data for all Norwegian manufacturing firms from 1972-2003, provided by Statistics Norway. The analysis shows that there has been a substantial reorganisation of the location pattern of manufacturing industries within Norway in this period. A tendency of decreasing specialisation and general convergence in the economic regions of Norway is observed, and, similarly, we have observed an on average steadily decreasing concentration level in the 25 manufacturing industries studied. The deindustrialisation process has by many been feared to lead to increasing concentration in central regions, but these fears may be somewhat subdued by our results as the concentration level on average has decreased. Some characteristics of specialised regions and concentrated industries have emerged from the analysis: A typical specialised economic region is not particularly central, it has a coastline and it is specialised in factor-intensive industries. A concentrated industry, on the other hand, is generally concentrated in more central economic regions, and in regions with a coastline.