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 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...

Granular microdata is of growing interest within economics and economic history. We present a uniquely detailed database of 21,557 observations of wages and 30,000 observations of prices in rural Denmark for men, women and children, and for both skilled and unskilled workers over the eighteenth...

The calculation of the number of days worked per year is crucial for understanding pre-industrial living standards, and yet has presented considerable obstacles due to data scarcity. We present evidence on days worked and seasonality patterns of work using evidence from a large database of...

Granular microdata is of growing interest within economics and economic history. Thus, we document, present, and make available to the scholarly community a uniquely detailed database of 20,152 observations of wages and 30,000 observations of prices in rural Denmark for men, women and children,...

We explore the role of elites for development and in particular for the spread of cooperative creameries in Denmark in the 1880s, which was a major factor behind that country's rapid economic catch-up. We demonstrate empirically that the location of early proto-modern dairies, so-called...

Can the effect of a positive health shock, such as childhood vaccination, transmit across three generations? To answer this question, we estimate the impact of smallpox vaccination in childhood on the longevity and occupational achievements of three generations using unique individual-level data...

In recent years, foreign labour has become an essential issue in Western Europe. Recent research suggests that foreign labour has implications for regional growth patterns and employment opportunities of native workers. Yet, few studies go into the dimension of the regional determinants of...

We examine how the introduction of smallpox vaccination affected early-life mortality and fertility in Sweden during the first half of the 19th century. We demonstrate that parishes in counties with higher levels of smallpox mortality prior to the introduction of vaccination experienced a...

This research evaluates the impact of the introduction of clover and potatoes on urbanization using a panel of Danish market towns from 1672 to 1901. We find evidence that both clover and potatoes contributed to urbanization using a difference-in-difference type estimation strategy which...