Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/253733 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
EHES Working Paper No. 219
Publisher: 
European Historical Economics Society (EHES), s.l.
Abstract: 
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.
Subjects: 
Dairying
Denmark
Ireland
microdata
productivity
JEL: 
N13
N53
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
808.86 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.