Ozempic is transforming the health of Denmark's economy

The success of Novo Nordisk shows the outsized effect a single company can have on a nation.

- Tyler Cowen

From both a biomedical and economic point of view, the success of the new class of weight-loss drugs is something to behold. Not only are they a remarkable scientific achievement, but also - in the case of Ozempic and Wegovy, both made by Novo Nordisk they are a huge boon to the Danish economy.

The Danish pharmaceutical industry kept Denmark from falling into a recession in 2023.

The dependence of some mid-sized economies on a single commodity, often related to oil or natural gas, is a familiar story.

The new twist, which may become increasingly common, is a national economy dependent on a single company - not a natural resource. This will lead to some fundamentally new economic and political dynamics.

One early example of this phenomenon is Nokia in Finland.

Finland is a small country, and Nokia's global sales of mobile phones were such that by 2000, the company accounted for about 4 per cent of national gross domestic product and almost 70 per cent of the value of the Finnish stock market.

In 2013, having failed to keep up with new technology, Nokia's devices and services business were bought by Microsoft.

Will there be more stories like Nokia's and Novo Nordisk's? Almost certainly.