Green Subsidies and Learning-by-doing in the Windmill Industry.

This paper examines the remarkable learning-by-doing in the windmill industry since it emerged in the beginning of the 1980's. Green subsidies for producing electricity by wind power has been a precondition for the rapid growth in the production of windmills. Based on time series of prices of windmills a dynamic cost function for producing windmills is tested. The cost disadvantage of producing electricity by windmills relative to traditional power stations has narrowed considerably because of a strong learning-by-doing effect. The deliberate policy to subsidize production of electricity by windpower has placed Denmark in a first-mover position in this market and the future has to show whether this is a successful story of an infant industrial policy.