Holy Cows and Spilled Milk: The Impact of Religious Missions on Firm-Level Productivity

Accepted in Journal of Development Economics

Working paper: https://ehes.org/wp/EHES_245.pdf 

With Jeanet Bentzen, Nina Boberg-Fazlic, Paul Sharp and Christian Volmar Skovsgaard

Did religious missions influence firm-level productivity? This study examines the impact of the Inner Mission (IM) movement on productivity in early twentieth-century Denmark, a predominantly Protestant and homogeneous society undergoing rapid industrialization. Using data on 964 creameries and employing an instrumental variables approach, we provide evidence that IM intensity reduced productivity in butter production, measured by the Milk-to-Butter ratio. The main mechanisms were Sunday closures, which disrupted economies of scale, and the fragmentation of creameries due to doctrinal disagreements among farmers. These disruptions prevented creameries from operating efficiently and reduced their profitability. Our results show how religiosity shaped patterns of modernization and industrial development absent the usual colonial or missionary confounders. This historical case speaks to debates in development economics about how informal institutions and moral regulation can constrain firm behavior and productivity.

Ireland in a Danish mirror: A microlevel comparison of the productivity of Danish and Irish creameries before the First World War

Business History

https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2025.2486643 

With Eoin McLaughlin, Paul Sharp and Xanthi Tsoukli

The relative success of the Danish and failure of the Irish dairy industries before the First World War is often contrasted. The traditional narrative assumes that the Irish failed because they were unsuccessful at adopting cooperative ownership, and that Irish cooperatives were not as efficient as their Danish counterparts, despite having been explicitly modelled on them. This is, however, untested at the ‘firm’ level. We rectify this through the analysis of a large microlevel database of creameries in both countries over the period 1898–1903. Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA), a standard methodology in modern productivity studies, we find that Irish creameries were in fact slightly more efficient on average than their Danish counterparts, although with a larger variance. This nuances the idea that the Irish were unable to establish cooperatives successfully, although some creameries were certainly laggards, and the reputational cost of this might have impacted the industry.

The paper is available as a working paper at:

http://www.ehes.org/wp/EHES_219.pdf 

Adaptability, diversification, and energy shocks: A firm level productivity analysis

Energy Economics

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2024.107887 

with Sofia Henriques, Paul Sharp and Xanthi Tsoukli

 Energy economists have long argued that energy systems need to be adaptable in the face of shocks. In the early twentieth century, Denmark embodied the opposite, with its industry almost entirely dependent on imports of coal from the UK. Towards the end of the First World War, however, and well into the 1920s, coal imports became expensive and more difficult to obtain. Local diversification was possible, however, through peat. We exploit detailed microlevel data from butter factories, covering the period 1900–28. Employing an event study approach, we find significant productivity advantages for firms closer to available peat fields in the wake of the coal shortage, and that these gains persisted even when peat was no longer used. Our results thus suggest that public policy might aim to support adaptability for firms less able to transition to more sustainable energy if that is the price of longer-term efficiency and survival.

Working paper version: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4821086 

A Microlevel Analysis of Danish Dairy Cooperatives: Opportunities for Large Data in Business History

Enterprise and Society

https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2023.13 

with Paul Sharp, Sofia Henriques, Eoin McLaughlin and Xanthi Tsoukli

We contribute to the argument for a “new” business history employing a quantitative approach. We illustrate opportunities for new perspectives from this approach using a novel microlevel longitudinal database comprising 131 variables for 1,419 cooperative creameries in Denmark for the period 1898–1945, which we also document and make available to the scholarly community. We present a number of applications of the data, including investigating regional productivity differences, expenditure on fire insurance, and survivorship and reporting biases.

Working paper version: https://ehes.org/wp/EHES_203.pdf 

A Firm Level Database of Irish Creameries, 1897–1921

Irish Economic and Social History

https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2023.13 

with Paul Sharp, Eoin McLaughlin and Xanthi Tsoukli 

We present a microlevel database of Irish cooperative creameries covering the period 1897–1921. The data were hand collected from the annual reports of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) and contain information from 531 creameries and covering 49 variables. We perform some initial analysis of the data, finding considerable heterogeneity in the productivity of creameries as measured by the milk/butter ratio. We focus on differences between the four historical provinces of Ireland, finding that the south of Ireland (the historical centre of butter production) was on average less productive than the north at the start of the period, although this changes after 1913, when Ulster becomes the least productive province. These results present interesting avenues for future work, given the IAOS’ focus on founding creameries in the north of the island.