Agricultural cooperation is seen as a way to solve collective action problems and has been associated with high social capital and other beneficial impacts in the countryside beyond productivity increases. But what if it comes into conflict with existing private concerns? The Irish dairy...

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...

We seek to understand the welfare of dairy cattle in Denmark from 1750 to 1900, a period marked by significant agricultural development and industrialization. By applying contemporary animal welfare metrics to historical data, we uncover a detailed picture of how bovine welfare evolved. Our...

The cultural assimilation of immigrants into the host society is often equated with prospects for economic success, with religion seen as a potential barrier. We investigate the role of ethnic enclaves and churches for the assimilation of Danish Americans using a difference-indifferences...

'Upper tail knowledge', embodied by knowledge elites, has been suggested to be a driving force of industrialization and development, yet measuring it remains problematic. Despite some recent innovations, much empirical work continues to rely on measures of 'average' or 'non-upper tail' human...

This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the Great Fire's effects on London's economic geography. Our analysis reveals both continuity and change. There was a swift postfire recovery accompanied by some shift in economic activity towards the City of Westminster by 1690, with markets...

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...

We provide evidence of how restrictions on labor mobility, such as serfdom and other types of labor coercion, impact labor market outcomes. To do so, we estimate the impact of a large negative shock to labor mobility in the form of the reintroduction of serfdom in Denmark in 1733, which was...

We provide a natural resource explanation for the divergence of the Portuguese economy relative to other European countries before the Second World War, based on a considerable body of contemporary sources. First, we demonstrate that a lack of domestic resources meant that Portugal experienced...