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.

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.

With Sofia Teives Henriques, Paul Sharp and Xanthi Tsoukli

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 where a long coastline made imports, largely from the UK, cheap and available. Towards the end of the First World War, however, and well into the 1920s, coal imports were cut off or difficult to obtain. We exploit detailed microlevel data from butter factories, covering the period 1900-28. We find that firms were able to adapt and make use of alternative fuels, notably peat, although its availability varied across the country. Employing a difference-in-differences approach, we find significant productivity advantages for creameries closer to available peat fields in the wake of the coal shortage. 

The paper is available as a working paper at: https://ehes.org/wp/EHES_220.pdf 

We wrote an opinion piece in a Danish newspaper about what we can learn from this project in relation to modern energy shortages with a flavour of geopolitical tensions. It was published on the day Russia invaded Ukraine. A full transcript of the opinion piece is available here: https://www.sdu.dk/da/om_sdu/fakulteterne/samfundsvidenskab/sam_nyhedsliste/kronik-raad-fra-fortiden 

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 given their competition for the lucrative British butter market. The traditional narrative implicitly assumes that Ireland failed because it was unsuccessful at adopting the cooperative institution, and that Irish cooperatives were not as efficient as their Danish counterparts, despite having been explicitly modelled on them. This assumption is, however, untested at the ‘firm’ level. We seek to 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 no evidence for significant productivity differences on average, although there was a much larger variance in Ireland. This nuances the idea that the Irish were unable to cooperate successfully, although some creameries were certainly productivity laggards.

The paper is available as a working paper at:

http://www.ehes.org/wp/EHES_219.pdf 

Holy Cows and Spilt Milk:
The Impact of Religious Conflict on Firm-Level Productivity

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

We consider the impact of religious conflict on firm-level productivity during a period of industrialization. We zoom in on a Protestant and otherwise very homogeneous country: early twentieth century Denmark, where increased religiosity fuelled the emergence of pietist movements who fought for the hearts and minds of Danes. In the countryside, much of the religious debate concerned whether or not butter factories (creameries) should be closed on Sundays in accordance with the Third Commandment. Such creameries, for 964 of which we construct a rich microlevel dataset, were the main catalyst of the industrial revolution in Denmark. We provide plausibly causal evidence that productivity was lower in areas where religious conflict was more pronounced. We also demonstrate that this impacted negatively on profitability, and that conflict drove the productivity declines, rather than the choice as to whether to produce on Sunday or not.

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