The relative success of the Danish and failure of the Irish dairy industries before the First World War is often contrasted given their competition for the lucrative British butter market. The traditional narrative implicitly assumes that Ireland failed because it was unsuccessful at adopting...

Economic historians have debated the importance of energy for economic development. Energy economists would argue that energy systems need to be adaptable in the face of shocks. In this light, we consider the case of Denmark, a country which was almost entirely dependent on imports of coal, and...

The rapid spread of the Danish dairy cooperatives from the 1880s until the First World War is often portrayed as a uniform wave which swept the country. We investigate this using exceptionally detailed micro-level panel data taken from the Operational Statistics of Creameries, which were...

The relative success of the Danish and failure of the Irish dairy industries before the First World War is often contrasted given their competition for the lucrative British butter market. The traditional narrative implicitly assumes that Ireland failed because it was unsuccessful at adopting...

Economic historians have debated the importance of energy for economic development. Energy economists would argue that energy systems need to be adaptable in the face of shocks. In this light, we consider the case of Denmark, a country which was almost entirely dependent on imports of coal, and...

Unified Growth Theory postulates a transition from a Malthusian to a post-Malthusian era and finally to modern economic growth. Previous studies have been able to date the end of the post-Malthusian era, but none have conclusively established the timing of the end of the Malthusian era and thus...

We consider the impact of non-violent religious conflict on firm-level productivity. We zoom in on a Protestant and otherwise very homogeneous country: early twentieth century Denmark. We exploit variation due to the emergence of pietist movements who fought for the hearts and minds of Danes. In...